Copy, Alter and Control: The Déjà Entendus ofDisc Jockey Culture
John Patrick Shiga
Department ofArt History and Communication Studies
McGill University, Montreal.
June, 2002.
A thesis was submitted for the partial fulfillment ofthe degree ofMaster ofArts.
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Canada ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s, the practice of deejaying has been integrated into music-making and musical perlormance in hip hop, dance music, and other cultures. Disc jockeys have also become recognized as producers and authors of sound recordings. 1 examine how changes in the technological, legal and commercial environment of dise jockeys in the 1990s are articulated in the styles and methods of deejaying. 1 argue that the conspicuous and covert styles of sampling articulate different forms of authorship, economic interests, and notions of originality. While the covert style has been crucial to the emergence of the DJ-as-author and deejaying as a legitimate art, the conspicuous style of copying on the edges of DJ culture troubles the tenuous links between the new DJ-stars and their works.
RÉSUMÉ
Depuis 1970, la pratique du deejaying a été intégrée à la fabrication de la musique et à la performance musicale en hip hop, electronica et autres cultures. Les disc jockeys sont aussi reconnus comme étant des producteurs et des auteurs d'enregistrements de son. J'analyse comment les changements dans l'environnement technologique, légal et commercial des disc jockeys des années 1990 sont reflétés et mis à jour dans les styles et les méthodes de deejaying. l'argumente que les styles remarquables et empruntés de l'échantillonnage articulent différentes formes des auteurs, des intérêts économiques et des notions d'originalité. Alors que le style de l'imitation a été crucial dans l'émergence du D.J.-auteur et du deejaying en tant qu'art légitime, le style remarquable d'imiter la culture D.J. vient mêler les liens étroits entre les nouveaux DJ.-stars et leurs œuvres. Acknowledgments
The generous support ofmany people in the Department ofArt History and Communication Studies at McGill University has enabled me to carry out the research presented here. 1 am very grateful to Dr. Sheryl Hamilton for assisting me through each phase ofthis thesis and for an opportunity to do research for her that in fact led me in the direction ofmany ofthe resources and concepts that constitute a central part ofthis project. 1thank Will Straw for sharing his vast library ofpopular music magazines with me and for his patience in discussing and elaborating on issues he raised years ago. Thanks also to Nicholas Greco, Albert BaneIjee, Liane Curtis and Paul Hong, my fellow students, for friendly criticism and encouragement when it was needed most. 1 greatly appreciate my parents' unwavering support throughout my academic life. 1 would also like to give my thanks to Alliance Atlantis Communications for a generous fellowship during this past year ofmy studies. Contents
Acknowledgrnents
Chapter One: Time for a Re-think on the Social Relations of Copying 1
Objectives 6 Scholarly Articulations ofCopying in DJ Culture as Creative and Critical 8 Theoretical Framework 13 Methodology 17 Detailed Chapter Summary 18
Chapter Two: The Reverbrations of Originality in Sampling 21
From Containment ofInfinite Replication to Propulsion ofInfinite Sound Morphing 23 Seriality and the Display ofCreative Labor: Intra- and Intertextual Repetition 25 The Transposition ofLegal Constraints into Aesthetic Principles 33 Secrecy, Selection and Sampling: The Ties that Bind the DJ Star System 39 Conclusion 45
Chapter Three: Covering Your Tracks in the Art of Remixing 48
Historical Foreground: From Modem to Contemptuous Remixes 49 Sonic Infidelity: Originality-Through-Dissimilitude 50 The Rise of"Total Production" and a Lament for the Modest Remix 53 The Aestheticization ofSeparatism and the Non-Isolation ofthe DJ Practice 58
Chapter Four: Conspicuous Copying as Critique 60
Rearticulating the Disruptive Potential ofConspicuous Copying 61 The Author's Image and the Authentication ofDJ Works by Eye 62 Kopy Rites and Rituals: Authenticity in Covert and Conspicuous Copying 65 Implications ofthe Narrative ofCreative Development 68 Conclusion 69
Chapter Five: Bootlegging: Losing Faith in the Funk Soul Brotherhood 70
Planned and Unplanned Ruptures in the Illusion ofCeaseless Novelty 72 1999: The Re-emergence ofthe "Creative Bootleg" in Dance Music Culture 75 Making Fun ofthe Craft and Craftiness ofCopying: The Mixmag Bootleg Satire 77 The Emergence of"Desktop Bastard Pop" 85
Chapter Six: Outro to Mixtapes 91
Mixtapes: When is a Copy Just a Copy? 94 Re-searching for an Aesthetics ofMistakes 97 The Notion ofthe Audience as Copyists 98 And on that note... Reconsidering Copying as Appropriation 102
Works Cited lOS 1
CHAPTER ONE: Time for a Re-think of the Social Relations of Copying
A review in the Dayton Daily News (2001) ofhip hop/r & b star Mary J. Blige's "No More Drama" foregrounds the dynamic between copying and originality in contemporary popular music cultures:
Who could get away with crafting a song with PMS as its central theme and use the theme music from a soap opera? Blige gets away with it on her "No More Drama" because she is the exceptionally talented queen ofhip hop. The popular theme from The Young and the Restless works surprisingly weIl as Blige spills a story about drying up tears and moving beyond a painful, drama-fi lIed relationship on the title eut. She uses a celebratory tone describing how she overcame the burdensome encounter. A wailing blues guitar spirals into PMS, where she uses a Millie Jackson-like talklsing style to break down the monthly emotional seesaw she's experiencing.
Reviewing a single by Psy2ko and Mie L. Moodswing, Zac Crain (2002) writes in the Dallas Observer,
But look beyond the presence of That '80s Show riffs and stiffs: The song's Tears are doser to Mary J. Blige's subtle use of The Young and the Restless theme for her recent "No More Drama" single rather than another instance ofkaraoke cannibalism. Coulda [sic] been much worse, and this kind ofthing often is: Let's just say Tupac Shakur and Bruce Homsby go together about as weIl as a kick and a crotch, and Jimmy Page's acquiescence to PuffDaddy puffery marks down Led Zep's legacy to dollar-store priees.
Both interpretations revolve around the perception ofan exact repetition and a variation, a sample from a familiar recording and its contrast with the original material. Both reviewers are surprised by how well the sample works with Blige's lyrics, but more importantly, the use ofsoap opera theme music seems to workfor the original materia1. The reviewers are concemed with finding sorne redeeming value to a work which copies so unashamedly from mass media seriaIs, from the soap opera. The tirst review barely makes any reference to the sample at aIl focusing instead on the lyrical content and the expressions conveyed in the dynamics ofBlige's vocals. Blige "gets away" with copying such banal material because ofher exceptional talent as a vocalist. Ofcourse, music-making involves many kinds ofemulation or referencing, but the copying ofanother famous singer's vocal style is here differentiated from the exact copying or technical replication ofalready-recorded sound through digital sampling. Furthermore, these types ofcopying are quite explidtly stratified in the first review. 2
Similarly, Crain finds the copy to be excusable based on its perceived subtlety in relation to Blige's dramatic vocal performance. In both cases, the replication ofthe Y & R theme is a particularly risky, potentially compromising or contaminating instance ofcopying, because, first ofaIl, it is so obviously copied directly from the sound recording, and second, it has been taken from the rigidly formulaic mass media seriaI. This copy is then redeemed through the conventions ofreception; for these listeners the copy is tempered by vocal talent - it works merely as the ground on which a truly original and creative work is displayed. Turning to the discourses ofsampling and re-recording in DJ culture, it is immediately observable that the copy not only has a peculiar status but that the centrality ofcopying is accompanied by a series ofdiscourses and practices that contain the craftiness or duplicity ofthe copy. Centered as it is around replaying, copying and altering dance music recordings, DJ culture would seem to be best described as a culture ofcopying. However, this project will demonstrate a surprising concem among practitioners, dance music professionals and joumalists with authorship, innovation, originality and creativity in this particular culture ofcopying. Emerging out ofthis concem (or, more precisely, anxiety) with authorship has been a system ofdifferentiating and stratifying types or kinds ofcopying and copies according to surprisingly traditional aesthetic criteria. A review ofFabi Paras's DJ set at the London (England) dance club Full Circle provides a glimpse ofthe bewildering array ofoverlapping practices of recording and re-recording that have become central to musical (re)production in dance music culture:
Rhythm as opposed to melody, predominates. A bit ofa groove-aholic, he spends two days every week in the studio, laying down new tracks that he'll cut onto acetate, which makes his set unique. You know when you listen to him play, that at least halfofwhat you hear, you ain't heard no-where else. Every time 1 nudged my mucker, yelling in his ear "Oi! What's this?" The reply would be "1 think it's another ofFabi's." And not everything that gets cut onto acetate makes it onto white label. When you're cutting two new tunes a week, 1 suppose you don't have to release them aIl. 'Drive Me Crazy' by Outrage (a co-production), a funky guitared-discoed-tastic-cumba-Iucka-ed-groove-out [sic] should be winging it's way counter-wise on [UK record label] Boy's Own, ifthey can clear the samples (DJMagazine, July 1992: 17).
The music reviews ofthe Dallas Observer and The Dayton Daily News have something in common with DJ culture: they tend to make alibis for copying by drawing attention to the labor ofmusic-making and by articulating this work to particular ideals ofauthenticity centered around notions oforiginality and the value ofinnovation. The reviews of Blige's Y & R-tainted "No More Drama" contrast the Art ofmusic-making with the 3 craftiness ofcopying and the banal repetitions ofmass media forms. In this project, 1 examine a similar tendency in DJ culture to differentiate its practices ofcopying from the repetitious strategies ofthe popular music industry. ln interviews with DIs, it can be readily observed how practitioners ofsampling, deejaying, etc., are making their ongoing bid to be recognized as Artists rather than "tumtable operators", sound engineers, editors, compilers, or plagiarists. Like musicians in popular music more generaIly, DIs are engaged in a perpetuaI struggle to be recognized as creative subjects expressing themselves, not as specialists who produce particular kinds ofcommodities for an array offinely segmented markets. An important distinction, however, arises in the above example, for Fabi's talent and expertise is demonstrated through copying and replaying, not in sorne moment prior to them. Innovation and noveltyare generated by altering something in the process ofre-recording or replaying. Thus, alongside the highly visible and well-documented practices of"turntablism" - the display ofdexterity through "scratching", "tweeking" equalizers, beat matching, etc. - DI culture produces a sense ofmomentum or cultural change through successive re- recordings on various media. From magnetic tape, compact disc or vinyl, shards ofsound are copied and altered in the software studio or digital sampler to produce a new dance track. The track can then be distributed - or circulated through exclusive circles of connoisseurs and professions - through various media. The culturallife a dance track largely takes place through its movement through successive stages ofdistribution, from the exclusive "one-off' (acetate test-presses otherwise known as dubplates) to "promos" (for- promotion-only vinyl copies that are not supposed to be sold but rather given away to key DIs) to the official 12-inch single or compact disc release. In aIl ofthis copying, however, it is surprising how much ofpremium DI culture puts on innovation and originality. The paradoxical concem (indeed, my discourse ana1ysis might tempt the reader to see it as an obsession) with creating innovation in this culture ofcopying is sustained by coding each practice and each medium ofcopying according to the aesthetic values ofinnovation and creativity. However, even in the "modem" aesthetic criteria through which dance music producers and DIs make their bid for originality (that is, to present themselves as the point oforigin ofa unique "work", not merely as a contributor to its marketability), something like an aesthetic ofrepetition or seriality can be perceived. Umberto Eco (1997) provides a concise recipe for this "modem" aesthetic ofseriality:
(1) something is offered as original and different (according to the requirements of modem aesthetics); (2) we are aware that this something is repeating something else that we already know; and (3) notwithstanding this - better, just because ofit - we like it (and we buy it). (167) 4
An aesthetic ofrepetition can be observed at a number ofdifferent levels in popular music more broadly. There is intertextual repetition between texts from disparate discursive domains and what l call intratextual repetition, that is, repetition ofsignifying elements within the time frame ofthe song. The main distinction is that the pleasures of intertextual repetition requires knowledge oftexts outside ofthe present one whereas intratextual repetition is perceptible within the song or track itself. Since inter- and intratextual repetition address different degrees ofspecialization and knowledge about popular music history, they provide two distinct pleasures ofrepetition corresponding to Dl culture's division oflistening positions through secrecy. There is, however, another kind ofpleasure that is perhaps unintentionally afforded by the successive stages ofre-recording through rings ofexclusivity/secrecy. The procession ofreproductions generates mystery and anticipation, and in that sense, promotion is built into the appropriative practices and aesthetic ofseriality. For example, many ofFabi's anonymous or self-produced records will "drop out ofsight" or reappear in various forms and scales ofdistribution depending on their success in the dance club. Injungle music record reviews, this kind ofrepetition through various levels of anonymityand scales ofdistribution generates anticipation. Consider this rave review of a Dope Dragon record in Mixmag: "At last, this one that has been battered on dubplate [acetate] is finally on test press [promotional vinyl release] ... Buy it - end ofmessage!". Another review ofan Undercover Agent record indicates the same degree ofanticipation surrounding the anonymity afforded by white-label releases: "Here's one we've had on [dub] plate for a while and never knew who it was" (June 1996: 113). Practices of copying in Dl culture are thus directed in part towards the editing ofthe perception of copying, that is, carefully orchestrating the degree ofinformation that is carried by the copy about the work that was taken from and about the person who took from it. Furthermore, one ofthe most significant ways in which the perception ofcopying is edited occurs in both popular and academic 1iterature about Dl culture. Across these discourses about Dl culture's practices, copying is translated into the language ofmodem aesthetics by splicing the practice ofcopying into various components (selection, mixing, processing, repressing and replaying) and attributing these acts with varying degrees of creativity and critique. Having collected a vast array of1iterature that provides countless cross-sections ofcopying and the expertise required to do it well, its is worth outlining in the introduction to this project the historical specificity ofthis culture ofcopying centred around covering over its own repetitions or references. The operation oftumtables and the playing ofrecords in public places gradually formed a particular kind ofspecialized practice in certain disc-based musical cultures, a practice ofreplaying which then shifted in the 1970s towards a practice ofcopying wherein the already-recorded was altered through its re-recording and re-mixing with other sounds and other recordings. 5
Moreover, these novel ways ofreactivating the already-recorded were differentiated from piracy and plagiarism. This distinction was enabled by a shift in the location ofthe creative act from musical composition to recording and then to the selection, editing, compiling, sequencing and mixing ofthe already-recorded. In these shifts a redefinition ofthe creative subject and her or his work can be observed. One ofthe sites where this shift is most evident is in the DJ culture oflate 20th century dance music, where musical commodities such as mix CDs, radio broadcasts and clubnights are distinguished by star DJ personalities rather than by genre or the recordings used by the DJs. There are three discourses surrounding copying in DJ culture. The first understands it as entirely exploitative and uncreative; based on its utility to provoke these kinds ofanxieties surrounding intellectuai property, the second strand ofdiscourse explicitly copies without asking in order to trouble the notion ofsound-as-property; the third redeems the copy by foregrounding the labor involved in the process, the innovative assemblages produced therein, and the accessibility ofcopying to non-musicians. AlI of these discourses have a bearing upon the artistic credibility ofDJ practices. More generalIy, the way cultures indicate, evaluate, manage/regulate stylistic change and repetition has implications for the organization ofthe social relations ofcultural reproduction. My analysis ofdisc jockey discourses explores the relationship between the legal, commercial and ethical concems ofa particular community ofprofessional "underground" DJs and the way in which the technical processes, skills and labor of copying are signified in dance music aesthetics and coded on a sliding scale of individuality and creativity. Furthermore, largue that the differentiation ofDJ labor, which was afforded by certain practical conditions ofdeejaying, have been, and continue to be, translated into a narrative ofconscious progression towards creative autonomy, self-expression and individual authorship. The ways in which deejaying is practised and discussed are thus not merely reflective ofcontemporary DJ expertise, authorship and stardom, but rather, have contributed to their sedimentation. While DJ cultures have developed aesthetics ofrepetition and seriality, especially in dub culture and disco, what stands out in contemporary DJ culture is the way the recognition ofrecurrence through replication has been deterred. In a most curious tum towards a concem with authorship, DJ culture slides from a culture ofthe copy and an aesthetics ofrepetition towards an ideal ofauthenticity centered on "total production" which is marked in both music and speech about it by the convergence oftwo ideologically-potent concepts: the separation ofthe underground and the isolation ofthe (re-)recording artist. However, one ofthe primary objectives ofthis project is to demonstrate that the discursive operations that bind DJ labor to "works" are unstable, for they center around a notion oforiginality and creative autonomy which is not only troubled by the activation ofcopying machines in music-making (i.e. not cordoned to 6
mass reproduction and distribution) but is also being disassembled in copyright law and in the listening habits ofcontemporary dance music audiences. It might seem rather strange that 1 am arguing that DI culture has covered over copying and repetition, especially in dance music and hop hop which are distinguished by their emphasis on percussion and their use ofsamplers and turntables as musical instruments. It is indeed a strange way to approach such cultures, but upon close examination DI culture is one ofthe most useful sites for understanding contemporary modes ofregulating not only copying, but also the alignment ofcopying with the perception ofrepetition. In the authorial and creative interests ofDIs and the way legal and commercial constraints are translated into formaI principles, the importance of covering over certain kinds ofrepetition and ofdisguising the copy can be recognized.
Objectives
The academic is one ofthe discursive domains in which DI culture's practices ofcopying are translated into something other than the repetition and replication ofcultural forms. In this project 1 will consider the role ofspeech and writing about DJculture in the redefinition ofthe DJas a creative subject, ofcopying as a creative process, ofDJ practices more generally as beyond mere copying. 1carry this out through the analysis of interviews with DIs, journalistic and academic discourses as well as marketing literature. 1 examine the role ofthese texts in differentiating and guiding the DI's specialized forms ofreactivation: sampling, mixing and remixing. My analysis ofthese discourses is propelled by the following two questions:
i) Given the conceptual and kinesthetic differences between the taking ofmaterial culture and the replication ofelectronic signifying elements, what exactly are the power relations reproduced by the routine kinds ofunauthorized reproduction in DI culture?
ii) By what informaI means are copies authorized in DJ culture, who authorizes them, by what set ofaesthetic criteria are they authorized, and what kinds oflinks (material, spiritual, informational, etc.) are forged by this authorization?
While the goal ofthis project is to question the paradoxical emergence of a culture of originals within DI culture's practices ofcopying, the object ofthe project is not so much DI culture itselfbut rather the relationship between copying and social reproduction in contemporary Western culture. Specifically, the social implications ofthe cover-up of repetition in our culture ofcopying can be observed in the analysis ofthe discursive operations whereby the creative aspect ofreplaying and copying is defined. Certain 7 technical processes, knowledges, and skills are differentiated from the automated processes ofcopying as well as the routine practices ofcopying that take place in cycles ofmusical reproduction. 1 calI this discursive edifice the Art ofdeejaying and 1 explore the way it has in turn regulated both the authorized and unauthorized practices ofcopying that have been coded as creative, innovative, progressive, etc. To put it more c1early, style in DJ culture is about setting and resetting the parameters oftechnical replication. Considering the authorship in music has been associated with performance in rock music, my interest is in the discursive operations and practical conditions that have enabled DJ labor to be interpreted as creative oforiginal works, and how the borders ofthis rather tenuous notion ofthe author have been maintained. My analysis is also attentive to the importance ofinterpretive frameworks, especially those centered around notions oforiginality, in music-making. 1 will be making my own interpretive intervention by examining what happens to the notion of originality as it is put back into play in the discourses ofcontemporary DI culture. The redeployment oforiginality in the context ofDJ culture is usefui for the academic analysis ofthe interrelations ofsocial and cultural reproduction in popular music. The apparition oforiginality in DJ culture is indicative ofan important shift in the role of professional DJs in the music industry and in c1ubculture. 1 examine how sampling and remixing styles not only reflect the interests ofDJs, but in conjunction with the broader signifying system ofDJ culture (inc1uding speech about music as well as secrecy), these stylistic shifts have been important discursive means ofrepositioning the DJ as an "originator". While the interpretive frameworks ofappropriation, cutting-and-mixing, pastiche, etc., are usefui metaphors for understanding how DJ practices became technologies of authorship, they tend to detract from a consideration ofthe theoretical and empirical value ofcopying and repetition. My subset ofquestions follows from my central concem with the management ofinnovation and regulation ofcopying through the Art ofdeejaying: What kinds ofmusical experience are privileged in DJ culture and how do they relate to the hierarchy ofexpertise developed in DJ culture? What are the practical concems of DJs and how do they mesh or conflict with the values oftheir audiences? What kind of audience do DJs intemalize and what sort oflistening positions are constructed in relation to these notions? This subset ofquestions conceming the conceptualization ofthe audience and the interpretive frameworks ofactual audiences will begin to recover the potential ofpopular rather than specialized practices ofcopying for troubling the ,. _.,~ reproduction ofthe author in the form ofthe DJ. This objective is, however, tempered by what 1 feel after reviewing the literature in this field to be a necessary caution, for the temporal dimension ofcopying in remixing, bootlegging and sampling enables the power relations instantiated by an act ofcopying without-asking to be easily covered over and forgotten. This project is thus motivated by 8 an insight 1have had while culling through the plethora ofwriting and speech about DJ culture. An wide range ofrationalizations ofcopying exists in these texts, from the critique ofintellectual property to the maintenance ofdiasporic communities. The analysis ofrationalizations ofcopying needs to be integrated with an historical analysis of shifts in the remuneration patterns for sampling, remixing and bootlegging. Keeping this in mind, 1now tum to a review ofthe academic literature on DJ culture's practices of copying.
Scholarly Articulations ofCopying in DJ culture as Creative and Critical
Scholars frequently expect DJ techniques to be democratizing and subversive. The two dominant strands ofdiscourse on the practices ofDJ culture are those which interpret it through subversive theft or guerrilla warfare (Frith, 1986; Redhead, 1995) and those which understand it as part ofa tradition ofblack diasporic aesthetics (Ingham, 1999; Bakari, 1999; Rose, 1991; Zuberi, 2001). The two strands are to a significant extent intertwined; histories ofDJ culture frequently begin with the disruptive effects of deejaying and the practices ofsampling, bootlegging, and so on have been similarly framed in terms the struggle to make music in situations ofscarcity (Shohat & Stam, 1998; Hebdige, 1987). These intepretations, grounded as they may be in analyses of particular historical moments ofDJ culture, are increasingly unsatisfactory given recent shifts in the organization ofDJ culture in the 1990s such as the emergence ofan international star system. The contemporary context ofDJ culture within the organized relations ofthe music industry and the burgeoning clubculture industry compels a reconsideration ofthe extent to which the democratizing and subversive potentials ofDJ culture's practices have been actualized. Nevertheless, the appeal ofcopying-as-appropriation and appropriation-as subversive theft remain quite obvious to cultural researcher given the shift in the broader music industry towards the accumulation ofmusical rights rather than the production of sound objects. In his article entitled, "Copyright and the music industry" (1986), Simon Frith interprets the activation ofconsumer technologies in musical production as well as the unauthorized copying ofsound recordings in terms ofsubversive appropriation. For Frith, appropriating consumer technologies resists "oligopolistic control ofmusical media", while the appropriation ofrecorded sound resists intellectual property and the Romantic notion ofthe author on which it rests. In the field ofintellectual property, appropriation has been re-politicized in terms ofthe recontextualization or displacement ofsigns between social domains. The notion of 9 reverse or subversive appropriationl emphasizes the importance ofappropriative practices by subordinate groups in articulating resistance to dominant culture (Coombe 1991, 1993, 1996, 1998; Hebdige 1979; Frith 1986). Coombe (1991) articulates this view of appropriation as tactics ofresistance most clearly:
These practices ofappropriation or 'recoding' cultural forms are the essence of popular culture and are understood by theorists ofpostmodernism to be central to the political Qractices ofthose in subordinate social groups and those marginal to the centers ofcultural production (1864).
The conflictual model ofcultural exchange is embedded within the rhetoric ofthe appropriators themse1ves, as Hebdige (1979) observed in the "se1f-consciously subversive bricolage" ofsubcultures and which we have seen more recently in the names ofsampler based collectives like the Kopyright Liberation Front (discussed in Chapter Four).2 Appropriation-as-theft superimposes upon DJ practices a subversive aura when in fact there are many other indications that a professional class ofDJs has become both integrated into the organized music industry and has become a hegemonic cultural formation within the c1ubculture industry. Frith's notion ofcopying as guerrilla warfare might be able to account for sorne instances ofcopying and technological appropriation, but they are moments in a broader process ofwhat Sarah Thomton (1995) caUs enculturation, whereby technologies once considered to be an affront to notions of authorship become legitimate means ofproducing musical works and inteUectual property. Practices ofcopying have a disruptive potential, but in every instance it must be demonstrated exactlY what is being disrupted and how. Disregarding copyright is not inherently subversive ofanything, and, as Steven Feld (1994) has convincingly argued, it is important to examine how "copying without asking" reproduces social divisions and accentuates the unevenness ofauthorial geographies.3 In the realm ofreproduced sound,
1 Subversive appropriation as theft could also be called re-appropriation but, given that it does not have the drastic effect ofreversing power relations, it rnight be more appropriate in many instances to calI it compensatory appropriation
2 The use ofthe term "appropriation" cames into electronic and digital copying the meaning ofthe term in cultural anthropology and postcolonial theory which draws attention to the divisions and unevenness of those who take and those who are taken from. Subversive appropriation-as-theft, reverse appropriation, or re-appropriation can be understood as a broader set ofpractices which contest those divisions and inequalities instantiated and marked by the imperial plundering or commodification ofcultural forms For notions ofreverse appropriation or re-appropriation see Rosemary Coombe (1996), Embodied Trademarks: Mimesis and Alterity on American Commercial Frontiers. See also Ella Shohat and Robert Stam (1998) for a Bakhtinian interpretation ofre-appropriation as resistance in various "alternative bricolage aesthetics". 3 Keith Aoki (1996) and Rosemary Coombe (1996) also trace out the borders and concentration oflegal authorship and how this constrains cultural exchange in the digital era. 10 the guerrilla warfare notion ofunauthorized reproduction is inadequate for a serious consideration ofthe ro1e ofcopying in the po1itica1 economy ofmusical rights. 4 Not on1y that, but the p1easure ofgoing out clubbing or listening to a DJ's musical programme bears little relation to the quasi-militant semiotic transgressions evoked by the subversive theft thesis. Will Straw (1995) has noted that 1970s research on dance music audiences suggested that they "shared the same dispositions as those who listened to Beautiful Music stations: both wanted an unobtrusive, unchanging soundscape as the backdrop to their daily lives" (250). The audience intemalized by the producers of CUITent DJ mix CDs also evidences this disposition, as Smash at New Breed Records suggests: "1 think that'show people want to hear music - on a continuous basis" (Streetsound, No. 81: 10). Thus, my preference for consensual models ofcopying is based on the specifie kinds ofgenre conventions, audience dispositions and ethical codes that guide the majority ofDJ practices in the 1990s. In the discourse ofblack diasporic aesthetics, the notions ofcultural and technological progress are explicitly challenged through a proliferation ofcompressed histories ofaesthetics ofrepetition across different technological conditions, often beginning with African orality and its percussion-based musical aesthetics towards Jamaican dub and ending with American hip hop and UKjungle (Ingham, 1999; Bakari, 1999; Rose, 1991; Zuberi, 2001). The copying-as-tradition thesis developed in research on deejaying in the black diaspora has the advantage ofunderlining a dynamic between the aesthetic values ofinnovation and repetition. However, as Deborah Root (1996) and Steven Feld (1994) have suggested, such interpretations ofcopying through ideals of brotherhood and tradition have also been useful rationalizations ofcopying-without asking in contemporary music industries. Other scholars have uncovered an aesthetic of repetition in popular culture more generally, and 1 will demonstrate the usefulness ofthis work in the context ofmy theoretical framework in the next section. The copying-as-tradition thesis suggests that the technologies activated in deejaying enabled the reproduction and transformation ofa collaborative form of authorship through successive variations ofreproduced sound.5 This insight opens up the possibility ofthe transformation offorms ofauthorship centered around notions of originality and individual authorship. Indeed, the activation ofconsumer technologies and copying machines in musical production (in deejaying, sampling, remixing, etc.) has
4 Jari Muikku (1995) has shown how radio stations in Finland use old records no longer covered by copyright and those which are not covered by international copyright as ways ofreducing costs. SIn Cut 'n' Mix the terrns appropriation and bricolage do not figure very centrally. They were replaced by an array ofterrns, such asfusion, mosaic, lacing,jumbling up, talking over, capturing, splicing, phasing, and, most importantly, versioning and cutting and mixing. The practice ofcutting and mixing compe1s a reconceptualisation ofappropriation because it is not necessarily spectacular, antagonistic or exdusively subcultural. Hebdige celebrates the apparent accessibility ofthe new mode ofappropriation: "AlI you need is a cassette tape recorder, a cassette, a pair ofhands and ears and sorne imagination" (141). 11 inspired a rather optimistic strand ofscholarly work conceming the end ofthe finished text and the undermining oftraditional notions ofauthorship (Krasnow 1995; Frith 1986; Poschardt, 1998). But like collage in the 20th century art-world, the use offragments from the everyday, from other people's works, and from various artistic traditions has not coincided in popular music with the demise ofRomantic authorship (the author-as originator) or the notion ofthe artist-as-genius in the interpretive frameworks through which their practices are explicated and their works are evaluated (and exchanged).6 Moreover, since the Romantic author was constructed during the deployment of 7 mechanical reproduction , why should the use ofreplication technologies in musical production necessarily pose a threat to this construction ofthe author? Scholarly work in the 1990s attended to this question by analyzing the parallel shifts in the characteristics ofthe sounds DJs play and the construction ofthe "mixer" as author (Thomton, 1995; Fikentscher, 1995; Barkari; Reynolds 1998a, 1998b; Krasnow 1995; Hesmondhalgh 1998; Straw, 1995).8 Notions ofthe audience are closely linked with the self-presentations ofthe DJs as auteurs. As Straw (1995) has observed, in dance music culture the relationship between the DJ and the club clientele is one of distantiation, differentiation, and stratification. Since appropriative practices like sampling are embedded in the material culture and aesthetic values ofDJ culture, these relations between performers and audiences can be reproduced in recording (or re recording) as well. David Hesmondhalgh (1995) has recognized the lack ofinterest in authorship as an ideological goal which was afforded by the "free advertising" ofdance music culture through moral panics in the mass media surrounding early rave culture and by a connoisseur-based audience that was prepared to spend substantial amounts oftime searching for information about music.9 He offers a useful starting point for my analysis,
6 S-ee Mark Rose (1988), "The Author as Proprietor: Donaldson v. Becket and the Genealogy ofModem Authorship" for the emergence ofthe notion ofthe author/artist as the origin and hence owner ofthe "work" and its persistence as a "legal reality". 7 See Lury (1993) on the way the infinite replication ofthe "work" was contained through notions of originality and exclusive/monopoly rights to copy. 8 AIso, as Sanjek bas shown in his analysis ofthe Sound Recording Act in the US, the sound recording became a 'work', the rights to which were in practice heId by the record company, and the 'authors', including sound engineers, were paid by the company but did not necessary have any part ofthe musical rights. 9 One ofthe reasons that authorship has not simply faded away with the activation ofrecording and replication technologies in musical production is that, as Hesm
Once the sampling-as-theft notion dropped offthe agenda, attitudes to the instrument [the samplerl split between postmodemist versus modemist. For sorne, the sampler is still a too1 for collage, for elaborate games ofPop Art referentiality. For others, the sampler represents an easy-as-pie update ofmusique concrete 's tricky and time-consuming tape-splicing techniques (365).
On the one hand, there is a modemist aesthetic that seems to be extended by DJs into sampling. As Paul Théberge (1997) writes, "In sorne ways, popular uses ofsamplers today exhibit a certain continuity with these modemist ideals and may exemplify the absorption ofmodemism into popular culture" (204). The "quasi-scientific" approach to "natural" or found sounds in the sampling practices ofgroups like the Art ofNoise and other industrial music projects are understood in this modemist tradition. Scholarly work on DJ culture has been integral with the creative agency attributed to DJs. The ability to subvert regimes ofcopying (Frith, 1996), to communicate African lineages and revitalize the black diasporic historical memory (Zuberi, 2001), and continue the radical aesthetic projects ofthe European avant-garde (Poschardt, 1995) all contribute to the graduaI construction ofthe DJ as a creative subject. The question is left for present and future research as to what the social (especially the political and economic) implications ofthis valuation ofDJ labor are, and how the notions ofcreativity and originality are transformed in their application to DJsand through their depolarization with copying and replaying. DJs may not be composers, but they have certainly positioned themselves as significant contributors to the commercial effects or marketability ofrecords. In clubculture, the creative labor ofDJs is remunerated based on their perceived contribution to the commercial effects ofa club night, or more specifically, to the value oftheir reputation for increasing club attendance and ticket priees. Not only is their labor distinguished from other kinds oflabor in the payroll ofdance clubs, but there is also a large scale ofdifference in the claims DJs can make about their contribution to the success ofa club night. This suggests a similar pattem ofdistinguishing those kinds of labor that are considered integral to the experience ofthe "work" and those which are not that Celia Lury (1993) has noted in the film and television industries. Yearly wages in the 13 clubculture industry evidence a system, albeit indirect, ofdifferentiating between creative labor and other kinds oflabor, as well as the way in which DJs can exploit their reputation to make daims to commercial effects. Mixmag published the yearly wages of club workers recently (April 2001 : 71):
Flyer guys Nothing, just free entry Toilet attendant 3,000 pounds Bar staff 4,000 pounds Dancer 8,000 pounds Bouncer 10,000 pounds Resident DJ Il,000 pounds Lighting person 12,500 pounds Paul Oakenfold ('name DJ') 1.17 million pounds Fatboy Slim ('name DI') 3.5 million pounds
Although there is no legal framework for identifying original DJ sets there is an indirect mode ofseparating originals from non-originals, creative labor from other kinds oflabor. Thus, the subversion ofauthorship occurs not so much through appropriative practices themselves or the formaI principles ofcutting and mixing or sampling, but in the shift to the "credit list" in the culture industry more generally, which remunerates 'authors' based lO on their contributions to the commercial effects ofa recording • The problem ofdoing research on DJ culture in its CUITent manifestation is setting in motion an analysis ofthe auteur theory characteristic ofthat culture while being attentive to the challenges posed to the figure ofthe DJ-as-originator given the increasingly diverse set ofpractitioners and media This analytic tum is crucial since remixing, sampling and bootlegging have thus far been coded in DJ culture with varying degrees ofcreativity. The balance between the diachronie and synchronic dimensions of research is also important in order to consider those practices ofcopying which occur at a certain distance from the professional DJ community and which work under a different set ofaesthetic values and practical conditions. It is then possible to gain an understanding ofhow methodologies and interpretive frameworks ofpractices ofcopying negotiate these contexts and alter the kinds ofsocial relations produced by the technologies ofauthorship.
Theoretical Framework
DJ labor has been distinguished as creative in contrast _to other uses ofcultural goods in consumer culture. It has also been invested with the power ofcritique in scholarly work
10 Celia Lury (1993) has shown that the author-as-originator, a key figure in the development of intellectual property law was being disassembled in the remuneration patterns oflarge-scale cultural productions as weil as in the copyrighting of"works" such as computer programs and information databases. She points out that the credit list (in film, television, software, music, etc.) does not have the same function as the attribution ofauthorship, which now centers around those who can "lay effective claim to having contributed to the commercial 'effects' ofa cultural good." (53-4). 14 on this cultural formation. 1intervene in these interpretive frameworks by outlining the degree ofentanglement rather than conflict between legal/commercial constraints and the aesthetic principles ofDJ culture. As 1will discuss in subsequent sections ofthis project, both the covert and conspicuous sampling styles take legal constraints and translate them into the formaI principles that are so familiar to us today: microsamples, intratextual repetition, subtle variability within the time frame ofthe record. Practitioners frame their stylistic choices in terms ofpractical solutions to legal complications. Although the characteristics ofthe aesthetics ofDJ culture cannot be reduced to legal imperatives, there is a great deal ofoverlap between the values enshrined in intel1ectual property law and those articulated within the DJ culture's Art ofdeejaying, sampling, and remixing. The consensus and conventions surrounding fair copying and obligations to be original established within "high" DJ culture's Art ofdeejaying are below the threshold ofperception ifwe retain a conflictual model ofsubversive appropriation. Similarly, we cannot engage with the entanglement or intertwining of aesthetic values with the social relations ofcultural reproduction ifwe depend on conflictual models. Moreover, the notion ofappropriation-as-theft is spatially-biased, that is, it tends to formulate transgression in terms ofthe displacement ofsignifiers across discursive domains. With only the conflictual model ofappropriation, research on DJ culture would not be equipped to engage with the historical ascendence ofthe appropriators to DJ godstars and the way the methodologies, interpretation and remuneration ofDJ practice have contributed to this shift. Altematively, the notion ofenculturation as deployed by Sarah Thomton (1995) in her history ofdeejaying enables disruption to be demonstrated in particular moments within a broader tendency towards the incorporation ofthese techniques and technologies into established artistic criteria. The Art ofdeejaying relies on the articulation ofits repetitions and copies to modem aesthetic criteria ofwhich appropriation-as-subversive theft is certainly an important part. However, it has also tended towards anti appropriationist notions oforiginality, and this is where the theoretical assets of enculturation become evident. By considering the way enculturation has enabled DJ practices to be articulated to notions ofauthorship, we are then prepared to understand the minor disruptions at the edges ofDJ culture as its technologies and methodologies of authorship are tumed towards other uses. As copying has been gradually enculturated and translated into the language of creativity and innovation, the value ofthe copy and th~ pleasures ofrepetition that it enables have been increasingly obscured. 1mobilize copying and repetition to critique the interpretive frameworks centered on originality and creativity even while accounting for their dominance and significance. By redeploying the concepts ofrepetition and the copy, 1uncover those aspects ofDJ practice that make individual authorship unstable. In 15 this way, the subset ofpractices and discursive operations that maintain the borders ofDJ authorship can be accounted for. What Umberto Eco (1997) describes as a "modern" solution to repetition, and James Snead (1998) describes as a Western approach to repetition, insists on framing rhythm and repetition in terms ofprogress, growth or development. James Snead's remarkable essay on the aesthetics ofrepetition makes several key points that will be crucial to my interpretation ofsampling, remixing, and deejaying. But he considers the aesthetic ofrepetition to be virtually absent in Western culture. He argues that
cultures differ among one another primarily in the tenacity with which the 'cover up' [ofrepetition] is maintained and the spacing and regularity ofthe intervals at which they cease to cover up, granting leeway to those ruptures in the illusion of growth which often occur in th.e déjà-vus ofexact repetition (64).
Unfortunately, Snead reproduces the very dichotomy between Black and European culture that he is critiquing in the work ofHegel. In much ofthe "black" music discussed in this project, such as hip hop and r 'n' b, the practitioners ofsampling and remixing have sustained the values that Snead attributes to European culture, particularly the insistence upon maintaining "the illusions ofprogression and control at all costs" (Snead, 69). The "third option", which, for Snead, is characteristic ofEuropean approaches to repetition (i.e. covering it over) characterizes the DJ practices ofhip-hop as much as those ofEuropean house and techno DJ cultures. The third option, "the subsumption of development within stasis" and the translation of"essentially exact repetitions... into a vocabulary ofgrowth and development" (69) is prevalent in Black and European DJ cultures alike. Snead's "third option" corresponds to Eco's "modern" solution to the dynamic between innovation and repetition where the value ofthe cultural good is invariably located in the variation rather than the scheme. The cover-up ofrepetition, 1 suggest, is crucial to the editing ofthe perception of DJ practices as creative, the DJ as a creative subject and the DJ's "work" as a prototype rather than a copy. The cover up occurs not only in the ongoing discourse ofartists-as geniuses and authors-as-originators, but also in the politicization ofappropriative practices in terms ofopposition to the formulae and conventions associated with industrialized cultural production. Notions oforiginality-through-copying and copying as-appropriation cover over repetition, that is, the inevitability, necessity and pleasure of repetition is ritualistically denied through these discourses. 1borrow the terms "originality-through-copying" and "copying-as-appropriation" from Hillel Schwartz (1996) who has written extensively on the peculiar status ofthe copy and copying in Western culture. His discussion ofplagiarism is particularly relevant, as he comes to a similar conclusion as Gregory Ulmer (1983), that is, that there is nothing inherently subversive about any given formaI principle. While "appropriationist art" in the 20th century seemed to be incommensurable with notions oforiginality, Schwartz shows how 16 copying and plagiarism were articulated as a means ofbeing creative and original. This "third option" or "modem aesthetic solution" in DJ culture has produced a new interpretive frame for copying, distinct from both appropriation and tradition theses, which 1understand in terms ofSchwartz's originality-through-copying. The aesthetics of DJ culture and its self-presentation as a kind ofprogressive vanguard revolve around the containment ofthe déjà-entendus ofgenerative or temporal replication. My analysis of sampling, remixing and deejaying styles will show how re-recording, remixing and replaying in DJ culture are guided towards the production ofthe original mix and the obscure/untraceable sample. In the comparative survey ofthese paradoxical musical objects, 1detail the conditions that DJ culture sets for the temporal or generative copying ofsonic material. 1use the concepts developed by these writers on copying and repetition to highlight the values according to which the stylistics and methodologies ofDJ practice were articulated: from the extended dance remix ofthe disco era and the sampling-in-bulk ofearly electronic dance music towards the microsamples and the original remix ofthe late 1990s. The overall tendency is towards what Paul Théberge (1997) has called "unique sound". Théberge has shown how proprietary authorship has been reconfigured around "unique sound" in popular music production in the moment ofrecording. He writes,
musicians today (and critics and audiences as weIl) often speak ofhaving a unique and personal 'sound' in the same manner in which another generation of muslcians might have spoken ofhaving developed a particular 'style' ofplaying ofcomposing. The term 'sound' has taken on a peculiar material character that cannot be separated from either the 'music' or, more importantly, from sound recording as the dominant medium ofreproduction (279).
In the case ofdance music and hip hop, unprotected works (white labels, bootlegs, etc.) as weIl as "vulnerable" works (obscure and old records) become resources for the production ofnew kinds ofproperty such as DJ mixes, remixes, sample-based tracks and DJ name brands. ParadoxicaIly, the technical procedures ofcopying and remixing have, over the last decade, tended towards a notion ofuniqueness exemplified by the "total production". 1underscore the way copying has moved towards an ideal of expressive fidelity, towards copying/sampling/remixing one's self, and that this re-mystified self expression was staged through a model ofdissimilitude from the actual cultural material that it copies. FinaIly, writers on the aesthetics ofrepetition have demonstrated in different contexts that the value ofinnov91ion shapes both the production and evaluation ofcultural works within and without the academy. In this project 1reconsider the value ofrepetition for understanding copying not so much as appropriation, collage or innovative assemblage but as enabling the pleasures ofinter- and intratextual repetition. In short, the deflection ofcreativity needs to be considered as precisely that, rather than translating it into the language ofradical aesthetics and cultural progress. 17
Methodology
Research on the construction ofthe figure ofthe author in any cultural site cannot afford to disregard speech about music injournalism. A degree ofhyperbole might be expected in music journalism, but the rhetoric ofinnovation, experimentation, and terrorism should not be dismissed since it replicates the interpretive frameworks centered around originality and creativity which in turn shape the meaning and value ofthe works in question. In his discussion ofthe term "creativity," Raymond Williams (1987) writes, "The word puts a necessary stress on originality and innovation, and when we remember the history we can see that these are not trivial daims" (84). The social relations ofaDJ culture that has begun creating not just seriaI products but new forms ofauthorship cannot be fully analyzed without an attentiveness to speech about music. Speech about music by practitioners is notorious for making interpretive moves that contract the meaning of musical texts. But in that contraction, which Michel Foucault (1977) describes a key function ofthe author, we can see how DJs rationalize their authorial c1aims. Furthermore, in this particular case, speech about music does not simplyfzx the meaning ofworks, but rather mobilizes those texts through particular notions ofthe creative subject. Finally, as Feld (1984) points out, this is also where the conventions, codes, concerns, and problematics ofmusical cultures are continually redefined. In short, speech about music is one ofthe most useful discursive sites where the struggle over meaning is accessible to analysis. Feld writes,
Interpretive moves involve certain dimensions ofcommunicative action. Recognition ofcertain features ofcode, genre, stylization, and performance instantly identify boundaries ofthe musical object that exist in a tension of ideational and material structure, ofmusical and extramusical features... A range ofsocial and personal backgrounds - shared, complementary - stratified knowledge and experience, and attitudes... enters into a social construction of meaningfullistening by interpretive moves, establishing a sense ofwhat the sound object/event is, and what one feels, grasps, or knows about it (11).
Speech about sampling, remixing and so on in DJ magazines presents musical experience and expertise as differentiated and stratified; it is also where practices ofcopying without-asking are rationalized and valorized. In DJ magazines (namely, DJMagazine) most ifnot all ofthe artic1es and interviews concern what makes a good DJ and what characterizes a well-done mix, remix, etc. These resources also provide insight into the historical shifts in notions ofthe audience, most notably in British DJ magazine, Mixmag's move in the 1990s to redesign its format for a broader audience-as-consumer beyond the connoisseurist community ofDJs. Thus, the displacement ofrecord reviews 18 to the back ofthe magazine in the early 1990s and the foregrounding ofreviews ofclub nights suggests a new optic being installed for a new notion ofthe audience as a market for other commodities besides records and DJ equipment. An analysis ofthis popular literature indicates a gap between the way DJs interpret their work and the way it is re viewed from club-goers. My project thus analyses discourses, from interviews to reviews, from recipes for successful remixes to scholarly interpretations ofremixing, as well as the records and other sound objects. In these texts we find the reproduction ofthe links between DJs and "works" that have provided an ethical and aesthetic rationale for the sedimentation ofproprietary relations to unique sound. But we also find other equally important aspects ofthe social dimensions ofmusical meaning in the often humourous parodies ofthe DJ-as-author, in the anxious remarks made by DJs about being copied or emulated, and in de-mystification ofthe Art ofDeejaying in the "how-to" guides for crafting compelling copies. The ordering ofmy chapters is intended to give a sense ofthe rendering and subsequent undermining ofthe DJ as creative subject, author and godstar by examining historieal shifts in stylistics, methodologies and interpretive frameworks. The diachronie trajectory ofthis research is set in motion by the analysis ofthe way practitioners of sampling, remixing and bootlegging interpret shifts in style and practice and how they explain these shifts. By attending to changes in the conventions or stylistics ofeach practice as well as to their graduaI stratification, l engage with the social implications of the transposition ofindividual authorship into a star system in the "high" DJ culture ofthe 1990s. The synchronie angle ofthe project examines the intertwined practices of sampling, remixing and bootlegging and the kinds ofsocial relations instantiated by the parallel methodologies and aesthetics ofcovert and conspicuous copying. l analyze the coding ofthe different media ofDJ labor and their differentiation in terms ofdegrees of creativity. l also draw attention to the close relationship between the definition ofDJ expertise - that is, what makes a good DJ in High DJ culture in contrast to wedding DJs or amateur DJs - and the signifying system that enables the differentiation oftypes of copying. The diachronie and synchronie are integrated in this way to show how copying is split up into different types to isolate sorne specialized modes as properly creative and original, while also showing how these notions change over time with the increasing concem with individual authorship.
Detailed Chapter Summary
In regards to the two key concepts ofDJ discourse, originality and copying, largue that they are being transformed in two major ways: a) by their deployment in the realm of 19 sampling and replaying where a set ofstylistic strategies is necessary to obscure their recombinant mode ofproduction, and b) by their depolarization. In Chapters Two and Three 1explore how this conceptual transformation is actualized at the level ofsampling and remixing methodologies. 1 analyze DJ discourses in which the shift towards covert sampling is understood to be a result oflegal and commercial concems on the part ofDJs. In addition to these practical conditions cited by DJs, other scholars have shown that DJ techniques are founded on particular notions ofprogress and connoisseurist values. 1 suggest that the extreme form ofDJ authorship evident in what Simon Reynolds has called the DJ godstar phenomenon was enabled by the regulation ofthe movement of sound between authorized and unauthorized reproduction. This regulation or containment ofreplication required a subset ofdiscursive practices in professional DJ culture such as secrecy and the redeployment ofthe notion oforiginality in the act ofselection. In the chapters on sampling and remixing, it will be explored how the notion of originality eclipses genre conventions, and thus marks the shift towards the stratification ofknowledge and expertise and the formation ofa more insular professional DJ community in the 1990s. This insularity is most evident in the way sampling methodologies and interpretive frameworks ensured the reproduction ofdifferent listening positions for the "naïve" and the "expert" listener. As 1trace out this historical emergence ofthe authorial figure ofthe DJ, 1suggest that a more democratic culture of the copy would revolve around an ethic oftransparency (it would not hide its source materials or shroud its mode ofproduction in secrecy) and would be more hesitant to establish hierarchies between performers and audiences, and between the formaI principles and pleasures ofunderground aesthetics and those ofthe mainstream. The simplicity and ease ofthe technical processes and the easily acquired sense of genre distinctions and conventions are covered over as authorship becomes an increasing concem in DJ culture. The tum from genre distinctions to the "beyond genre" status of DJ godstars is marked by discourses ofceaseless innovation and reversions to anti appropriationist notions ofmusical expression (creation from nothingness). In short, the three chapters on sampling, remixing and creative bootlegging demonstrate how the DJ godstar emerged in the 1990s through the editing ofthe perception ofcopying as an art form, what 1 have called the discursive edifice ofthe Art ofdeejaying, which rationalizes the redrawing ofproprietary boundaries around the "works" ofprofessional, underground DJ culture. In Chapter Four, 1begin to uncover the instability ofArt ofdeejaying which occurred at the edges ofunderground DJ culture where a wider audience began to appreciate the pop music references sampling could produce untempered by DJ conventions and connoisseur values. The historical shift in DJ culture towards covert copying is contrasted with the conspicuous copying of a successful and prankish media sensation, The Kopyright Liberation Front. 1 suggest that although a subversion of 20 propriety does not follow from the deployment ofthe notion ofcopying-as-critique by these practitioners ofsampling, the KLF's methods were counter to those ofa Dl culture that had by then instituted a kind ofcopying that could not be perceived as such. Furthermore, I argue that The KLF's programme for developing a practical methodology ofresistance contrasts with the methods that were then becoming enshrined in the auteur theory ofremixing. I continue uncovering practices ofcopying that occur at the fringes ofDl culture in Chapter Five with a discussion ofcreative bootlegging and DIY remix culture. I explore how the repetitious strategies ofcreative bootlegging and DIY remixing are beginning to diverge from the aesthetic values and signifying system ofhigh Dl culture and that through their humor they suggest a common knowledge about the craftiness and craft behind the Art ofdeejaying. It bears asking at that point who is entertaining who. I conclude with an analysis ofthe Dl mixtape and suggest that its status and value as a copy (rather than as a unique "work" or as a critique) tells us something about the way listeners actually interpret the musical objects produced by Dls. The mixtape, I suggest, is interpreted not so much as the "work" ofa Dl but as the collaborative production ofa number ofagents including the audience. This last case ofcopying troubles the links forged in Dl discourses between the expertise ofthe Dl and the uniqueness ofa musical experience. The authentication ofmixtapes is made by means of the crowd noise, and this suggests to me not only a different set ofsocial relations communicated by these copies but also a further shift in conceptualization ofboth what constitutes the well-done "work" and how it is made unique by its activation within moments oflistening repeated over time. 21
CHAPTER TWO: The Reverberations of Originality in Sampling
Over the course ofthe last twenty or so years, one ofthe crucial factors in the enculturation ofsamplers into DJ culture has been the ability ofpractitioners to alter the perception ofcopying. The two interpretive frameworks described in Chapter One, copying-as-subversive-appropriation and copying-as-tradition have been useful in this regard. They both insta11 relatively new optics for viewing copying as a creative and critical process. In Chapter One, 1also outlined the relationship between repetition and replication in DJ culture and suggested that one ofthe peculiarities ofDJ culture is that it is a culture ofcopying centered around covering over intertextual repetition. The covering over ofrepetition in DJ culture corresponds to a third formulation ofcopying, that oforiginality-through-copying. As paradoxical as they may be, covering over repetition and being original through copying are underpinned by the rather ordinary practical conditions ofcontemporary DJ culture. The emergence ofcovert copying is indicative ofan awareness on the part ofpractitioners ofsampling ofthe potential conflict with legal regimes ofcopying. However, covert copying goes much further than simply avoiding copyright infringement. 1show how DJ culture has developed its own way of regulating copying, a kind ofpara11el regime ofcopying that revolves around the craftiness/craft dichotomy described in Chapter One. The display ofcreative labor through copying, 1 argue, has depended upon camouflaging ofthe intertextuallinks ofDJ culture's copies. 1 examine here the "third option" or "modern aesthetic solution" as it has been developed in the aesthetic discourses ofDJ culture. Sampling has deve10ped into an aesthetic and methodology ofdefacing, disguising, distressing the copy to the point where recognition is improbable and in many cases impossible. This covert copying technique has, moreover been shaped by DJ culture's increasing concern with authorship. Covert copying renders the instantly recognizable sound bite into an indexical sign for the sound morphing wizardry ofthe DJ. 1 examine the social implications ofthe articulation of sampling to the values ofinnovation and notions oforiginality. More specifica11y, 1 argue that this option or solution is particularly useful for DJs to make proprietary c1aims to their recombinant works. In order to show how sampling has been coded as a creative process in DJ culture, 1 examine the particular notion oforiginality that has been deployed in speech about sampling. As with a11 the chapters in this project, 1consider the deployment oforiginality in DJ culture to be a crucial interpretive intervention ofpractices ofcopying. 1 focus on the way this intervention has contributed to transformation ofthe value ofDJ labor, the 22 redefinition ofthe "work", and the rendering ofthe figure ofthe Dl as an author of unique sound properties. Last but not least, 1 consider the implications ofthis depolarization between copying and creativity in DJ culture for the notion oforiginality. "Extra-musical" discourses have a regulatory function. We can see this most c1early in the case ofcopyright law. However, my juxtaposition ofmusical texts and interviews will make c1ear the way writing and speech about musical practices are not really "extra-musical" but rather, they are embedded within the aesthetics ofDJ culture. "Interpretation" might connote an ontological subordination to something that precedes it, such as artistic expression. In fact, interpretive frameworks are like self-fulfilling prophecies. As we will see, interpretation involves setting the parameters ofwhat makes a sample-based "work" in particular contexts. A dynamic ofanticipation and frustration is set in motion in the way practitioners ofsampling articulate the past, present and future oftheir Art. In each section ofthe chapter, 1 explore a particular aspect ofthe practical conditions ofsampling: technological constraints, legal constraints, and the interpretive conventions ofaudiences. These factors are present in DJ-talk both directly in references to the law or commerce or indirectly through intemalized notions ofthe audience such as the "sample police". But 1question whether or not historical shifts in sampling styles can be reduced to these oft-cited determinations. The tendency towards microsampling in the 1990s is, 1 suggest, an articulation ofthese constraints. DJs articulate their practices of copying and replaying simultaneously to notions ofthe audience and to the new figure of the DJ as a creative subject. The construction ofthis creative subject is the raison d'etre ofDJ-talk's regulatory function, differentiating and stratifying kinds of seriality/repetition, techniques ofreplication, listening positions, and knowledge/expertise. Finally, in the interviews with practitioners ofsampling that 1 examine, a new regulatory discourse will become more visible, that oforiginality-through-copying. Regimes ofcopying are socially enforced aesthetic criteria and artistic methodologies. They are not limited to intellectual property law but exist in each moment ofcultural reproduction through etiquette, intemalization ofthe audience, the display ofcreative labor in music and in speech about it, and the making Qf authorial c1aims through contributions to commercial effects. 1thus examine the notion oforiginality as the structuring concept ofthe regime ofcopying deployed within DJ culture and intertwined with technological, legal and commercial constraints. What is crucial then is not so much that one ofthese factors be demonstrated to the one that has the most "impact" on sampling styles, but rather to explore the "non-isolation" ofDJ aesthetics and understand 23 the social context in which authorship rapidly became an issue not only for the musicians that were being copied but for the DJs/copyists themselves.
From Containment ofInfinite Replication to Propulsion ofInfinite Sound Morphing
In Western society, there are specialized institutions that regulate the potentially infinite replication ofworks, and this containment is rationalized through a discourse ofproviding incentives for innovation. However, these institutions are founded on particular notions ofwhat culture ought to do, that is, culture should progress. James Snead (1998) writes, "Strangely enough, however, what recent Western or European culture repeats continuously is precisely the beliefthat there is no repetition in culture but only a difference, defined as progress and growth" (63). By relegating repetition to technical replication, regimes ofcopying enforce the separation ofartistic production (creation/innovation) from distribution (copying/repetition). The line between creativity and copying is indeed troubled by the practice of sampling. Appropriationist music always runs the risk ofissuing a rupture in the illusion ofceaseless innovation by using technical replication to generate these copies over time rather across space. This distresses the boundary between artistic production and distribution or bootlegging (illegal trafficking). So how is this distinction being maintained in the "progressive" musical cultures ofhip hop and dance music which have incorporated the replication process into the moment ofproduction? There is a discrepancy between what the law requires (the demonstration of contributions to the commercial effects ofa sound) and what DJsare enforcing in both their unauthorized and authorized recordings. Thus, my intention is not to construct an opposition between regimes ofcopying and appropriationist "expression", 1merely want to point out that practices ofcopying can reproduce and transform the notion of originality on which those regimes are founded, in this case rectifying the most antiquated notions ofauthorship and progress in the most unlikely contexts: a culture ofthe re recording and the replay. As copyright law and the music industry phase out Romantic authorship in the theoretical applicability ofauthorship to various kinds ofworkers and copyright to "non-creative" works like phonebooks and the practical ownership of cultural rights by organizations, DJ culture has developed a multitude ofways of sharpening the classic authorial image as a solitary individual, that is, the figure ofthe author-as-originator. ln my exploration ofthe discourses surrounding appropriative practices in music, 1 have observed a pre-occupation with notions oforiginality and innovation in both 24 conceptions ofthe author and ofthe listener ofthese appropriationist works. The meaning and value ofmusic produced through sampling and remixing are mediated by an interpretive framework that Hillel Schwartz (1996) has called originality-through copying. Sorne practitioners have a strikingly anti-appropriationist perspective of sampling, evidencing a strong sense ofsampling as craftiness, that is, as skipping the steps one should go through to make something creative and original, to develop a unique sound from scratch (from nothingness). Missy Elliott, a successful American hip hop musician, puts it succinctly:
When you stay away from sampling, you have to be more creative and original, which does open the door to have someone bite your style. But we shouldn't be taking from the artists who came before us. They were original, and we should be too (Mitchell, 2000).
Having sampled much in her work, Missy Elliott has become one ofthe most frequently sampled musicians in the recent surge ofcreative bootlegging (discussed further in Chapter Three). To reiterate the aesthetic problematic: on what legal, commercial or ethical basis can the line be drawn around appropriationist works? One solution is to systematically eliminate sampling altogether, a solution that suits already-established artists who also have traditional musical skills (Elliott is a fantastic singer/rapper). After aIl, what attracts many non-musicians to sampling and deejaying is their relative accessibility to those without traditional musical skills (Hebdige, 1987). The solutions to the problem take on the more intricate forrn of genre conventions, that is, ofways ofdemonstrating originality and creative labor through sampling. We might expect to see the dissolution of"creation from nothingness" and ofthe image ofthe solitary artist, but we also find anti-appropriationist reversions to precisely this kind of creative subjectivity. In the broader DJ culture, the avoidance ofthe déjà entendus of repetition is accomplished not so much by avoiding samplers, but by setting the parameters ofwhen, how and what to sample in the ongoing process ofdefining the "creative" or "artistic" work. The creative act ofsampling revolves around selection and sound manipulation. Selection is supposed to demonstrate a cultivated knowledge ofdisc culture while sound manipulation stages the displa{~ftechnical know-how. 11 Reynolds (1998a) has observed
11 Another project could examine this signifying system in more detail, but for my purposes it suffices to point out that these signifiers retain their meaning through secrecy and the discursive subordination of the audience's knowledge to the artist's intuition, which 1 will be discussing latter in the chapter. Without these discursive aides, selection might signify the ownership of vast record 25 that the sampler's digitalization ofmusical "quotes" enables an unprecedented ease of rearrangement ofthe material as data: "This means the source can be disguised to the point ofunrecognizability, and it opens up a near-infinite realm ofsound-morphing possibilities" (364). l suggest that originality, when extended to these particular appropriative practices and technical procedures, no longer appears to function so much as a regulator ofthe potentially infinite replication ofworks. Originality becomes a motivator for the exploitation ofvarious copying machines and methods ofmorphing sound in the process ofcopying. In the following sections l underline the curious role oforiginality in the variability, as well as in the selection, ofsampled sound. The expanded range ofsignifiers in the DJ's palette ofsound-morphing possibilities has inaugurated a new hierarchy of skills corresponding to the figures ofthe "creative" and "unoriginal" DJs. While originality and creativity are being extended to appropriation and copying, its focus shifts from the mysterious "creation from nothingness," as Eco (1997) puts it, of Romantic authorship to the rather ordinary and easily learned recipe for "mucking about" with already-recorded material. On the other hand, the emergence ofa star system in DJ culture has been accompanied by a resurgence ofan archaic formulation ofauthorship originating in Romantic aesthetics. These incommensurable notions oforiginality are, for the time being, simultaneously circulating through DJ culture, from the artist as an autonomous and spontaneous creator ofunique sound to the skilled laborer who "builds" tracks in relation to an internalized notion ofthe audience as club clientele and its "distracted" mode ofreception.
SeriaI Aesthetics and the Display ofCreative Labour in Intra- and Intertextual Repetition
The traces ofthe audience and its authority in the moment ofmusical production are evident in the discourse ofDJs and samplers. The audience's prior knowledge of musical schemes or patterns as well as its conventions ofreception in the dance club are considerations in how sampling and deejaying are practiced. Playing to the audience and its ability to perceive and derive pleasure from the recognition ofrepetition and variation is one way in which musical expression is being de-differentiated from other kinds of labor like that ofthe "lighting guys" and dancers. Tempering this ordinariness however, is the notion oforiginality in the act of selection, and this selection is carefully made according to the connoisseurist values ofDJ
collections and sound manipulation could just as well signify the ownership of really neat machines or really interesting accidents! 26 culture. Any aesthetic ofrepetition will address those who are most familiar with the scheme and are thus able to perceive and appreciate the microscopie innovations/variations in the selected materia1. It is at this juncture ofrepetition and listening expectations where the social implications ofthe aesthetics ofrepetition can be grasped. As Eco (1997) puts it in the context ofthe intertextuality ofseriaI narratives,
The film presupposes a previous world-knowledge on the part ofthe spectator. And ifthe spectator does not know? Too bad. The effect gets lost, but the film knows ofother means to gain approva1.
These imperceptible quotation marks, more than an aesthetic device, are a social artifice; they select the happy few (and the mass media usually hopes to produce millions ofhappy few...) (176-7).
Not surprisingly then, DJs never tire ofasserting the importance ofhaving knowledge of DJ culture's history in order to grasp the significance ofthe selection ofsamples taken from funk, soul and disco records, that is, that these selections lead towards a more sophisticated sound. In this way, the imperceptible quotations ofcontemporary sampling in DJ culture construct the modellistener, a sophisticated listener who can perceive the copied in the copy and enjoy its variation as a sign ofstylistic progress or development. But sampling also enables repetition and variation within the text itself. While sampling in DJ culture tends to be practised for an ideal, model or sophisticated listener who grasps the intertextual reference, it also enables the pleasures ofa seemingly infinite variation ofsignifying forms within the timeframe ofthe dance music record itself. Indeed, one ofthe pleasures afforded by listening to a 12-inch single is the enjoyment of variations across a series ofthree or four remixes ofthe same song/track. Another example ofthis intratextual repetition is the stuttering vocals that pervaded dance tracks designed for early raves. No "worldly knowledge" is required to enjoy the rapid-firing of the "te" in "techno" over a five-minute record. Other kinds ofintratextual repetition have also come to dominate sampling aesthetics in DJ culture more broadly. While this is not surprising given that DJ culture centers around various kinds ofdanceable musies, the dynamies ofvoiees in techno music, for example, are usually chopped into incoherent parts ofphrases or even fragments ofwords. They then become "time-stretched", "filtered" and "pitch-shifted" so that the repetitions ofa fragment appear to change with slight variations in these settings. In a familiar track by English DJ Fatboy Slim, "Rockafeller Skank", the words "Right about now, the funk, soul, brother" are repeated endlessly until the climax ofthe 27 song when the "about now" is truncated to '''bout now" followed by repetitions of"b" so close together that the gap dissolves into a kind offlat-feedback noise. The process of microsampling in this particular case is demonstrated in the song itself. It works as a suggestive analogy for the entire process 1have been describing. The perception of intratextual copying, repetition and variation does not require the extensive knowledge of disc culture prized by DJs. Indeed, it is the climax ofthe song, where hip hop vocalist Lord Finesse's "funk, soul, brother" collapses into sound without linguistic sense, that seems to motivate the most enthusiastic dancing. In fact, however, the value and meaning ofrepetition is doubled by the internalization ofthis "naïve" addressee and his/her state of distraction as weIl as the "smart" listener (the DJ to whom the record must appeal in order to be played for club clientele) with his/her attentiveness to the canonical referentiality of copies/samples (Straw 1995). What is curious, however, is the degree to which referentiality is thwarted by the indexical meaning ofthe sound as a kind ofgauge for the DJ's technical know-how. In Chapter Five 1 will be coming back to Fatboy's "Rockafeller Skank" with an attentiveness to further shifts in credit for creative "contributions". The compulsion to be original through copying has significant aesthetic implications; it requires the increasingly microscopic differentiation ofunique and unoriginal copying. While it might seem preposterous to argue that contemporary dance music and hip hop avoid repetition, 1have begun to outline how sorne kinds ofrepetition (particularly when it involves replication) tend to be stigmatized as unoriginal. To bOITOW and mix Snead's (1998) and Schwartz's (1996) terms, the notion oforiginality-through-copying, that is, that originality is demonstrated in the procedures ofcopying, has narrowed the spacing ofexact repetitions in the aesthetics ofhip hop and dance music. These repetitions have become, like those in the track by Fatboy Slim, so close that they substitute historical reference with a series ofrepeated motifs circulating contemporaneously within DJ culture: the acceleration ofthe coherent "Brother Soul" into a phased-out, anti-organic oscillation - and back again - displays and repeats the process ofdivergence from referentiality. The temporality ofcopying does not resonate with soul, funk or rock music, but rather works as a ritual reenactment of DJ culture's departure from them. Ifthere is a sonic equivalent ofquotation marks, it is the use ofsound in such a way that even the "naïve" listener will recognise the borrowed material. The value of innovation or novelty, which compels appropriation to diverge from exact repetition, dissolves these quotation marks. The communicative act ofdefacement or devocalisation is difficult to frame in terms ofdialogue with the past in this case. In its place, sampling techniques become the new object ofvariability, establishing the signature tricks of 28 individual DJs, who guard these techniques more often then not with secrecy. The rationalization ofappropriation occurs in part through the discourse oforiginality through-copying, wherein the seemingly infinite variation ofsonic material in this technological assemblage can be pushed to such extremes that the sounds no longer bear any resemblance to their sources and so become the property ofthe copyist. The various appropriative practices in which these technologies are activated form not just one aesthetic ofrepetition but a variety ofapproaches to repetition. Following Eco, 1would call these approaches repetitious strategies. Each strand ofdance music and hip hop has its own conventions ofsampling that solve the above problem ofbecoming an "originator" through copying. In hip hop, for example, the significance ofbuilding drum beats from bits and pieces ofbreaks (parts ofrecords where only the drums are audible) from different records is second only to the agility ofthe vocalist. The laziness associated with using whole-bar samples from one record has propelled hip hop samplers towards the microscopie copying ofshards ofkick drums, snares and cymbals from an array ofobscure funk and soul records and their creative recombination. In techno music, sampling from records is coded as a rather crafty form ofcopying, and must be tempered by engaging more directly with the "feel" ofdifferent sampling machines. It is thus not so much the sample itselfbut the kind ofunique qualities which a particular sampler can give the sample. 12 In the context oftechno music, the highest degree oforiginality is awarded to those who, like the English techno musician Richard James, build their copying machines themselves. In this way, sampling methodologies produce tokens of the type as tracks within a genre. This level ofseriality can be distinguished from the level ofquotation. A typology ofgenre conventions can be derived from the different practices, remixing, sanlpling, bootlegging, deejaying, but also in the variations ofmixing styles or different proportions ofexact copying and sound processing. A broad typology ofrepetitious strategies is provided by Eco (1997), wherein five kinds ofrepetition in popular culture are distinguished: retake, remake, series, sega, and intertextual dialogue13. Such
12 In an interview, one ofthe most celebrated Detroit techno personalities, Derrick May, gives sorne hint of this system of being original through the "decentralized" approé!ch to using samplers: "Most people nowadays use sampled drum sounds to make one composite kit from several different drum machines. But while they're using sounds from assorted drum machines, they're making them sound like one drum machine. See, my concept has always been to get the feel from aIl drum machines simultaneously, not just one feel from one drum machine. 1 try to connect aIl the feels so that they accent and bounce off ofeach other." (Trask, 1990)
13 The retake "recycles the characters ofa previous successful story in order to exploit them, by telling what happened to them after the end oftheir [Ifst adventure... the story should reproduce, with only slight variations, the first one, or must be a totally different story conceming the same characters" (167). The 29 typologies as this draw attention to the way in which the token ofthe type is a result of the use ofcultural forms, that is to say that the equivalence between forms is enabled by particular conventions ofreception. AlI ofEco's types ofrepetition contain the following elements:
(1) something is offered as original and different (according to the requirements of modem aesthetics); (2) we are aware that this something is repeating something else that we already know; and (3) notwithstanding this - better, just because ofit - we like it (and we buy it). (167)
As reductive as this may seem, the typology has the advantage offoregrounding the pleasure ofrecognizing the typical or the token ofthe type. Eco also emphasizes the historical specificity ofan aesthetic centered on notions oforiginality and innovation. His typology demonstrates how repetition is still a key organizing element and mechanism of pleasure in mass media and popular culture forms. Further, repetition and seriality are not simply a result ofaesthetic values being overridden by economic imperatives (a "commercial trick") but rather, that these repetitions in cultural forms now conform to modem aesthetic value ("a moderated or 'modem' aesthetic solution") (162). Sanjek provides a typology ofthese solutions in sample-based music,14 and here we begin to see the way repetition is approached in DI culture at the level oftechnical replication. The first type contains "records which sample known material ofsufficient familiarity so that the listener may recognize the quotation and may, in tum, pay more attention to the new material as a consequence ofthat familiarity" (348). The second
remake "consists in telling again a previous successful story"as in Shakespeare (Ibid.). The series "works upon a fixed situation and a restricted number offixed pivotaI characters, around whom the secondary and changing ones tum" (Ibid.). The saga "is a series in disguise. It differs from the series in that the characters change (they change also because the actors age). But in reality the saga repeats, in spite ofits historicized form, celebrating in appearance the passage oftime, the same story". Intertextual Dialogue is constituted by "echoes ofprevious texts". It is intertextuality which has the most usefulness in a translation to copying in music: "There are imperceptible quotations, ofwhich not even the author is aware, that are the normal effect ofthe game ofartistic influence. There are also quotations ofwhich the author is aware but that should remain ungraspable by the consumer; in these cases we are usually in the presence ofa banal work and plagiarism. What is more interesting is when the quotation is explicit and recognizable, as happens in literature or post-modem art, which blatantly and ironically playon intertextuality" (170). 14 Hebdige (1987) provides a similar typology in bis history ofCaribbean music, although he uses only two categories. He describes fusion as the mixing of sounds from two or more sources which are more or less traceable to their sources. Hip hop, in contrast, is a mosaic produced through "snatches of sound" taken from a wide range of sources and traditions (although limited to recorded and broadcasted music). These bits of sound are scattered across the song, but the "beat stays the same throughout" (128). Andrew Goodwin (1988) also constructs a typology as weIl. AlI ofthese surveys share a lot of differentiating criteria, so 1 do not compare and contrast them in detai1. What is notable is the prevalence ofsurveys rather than genealogies ofsampling types, the only one ofwhich 1am aware ofit Feld's (1996). 30 category includes "those records which sample from both familiar and arcane sources, thereby attracting a level ofinterest equal to the lyrical content" (349). Third, there is "quilt-pop" where "recordings can be constructed whole cloth from samples to create a new aesthetic" (351). The fourth category is that of"altemate versions" or remixes, either included with the originals on 12-inch singles, or produced and released afterwards. In this schema, not only is the quantity ofsampled material (in legal contexts, this is measured in seconds) a key distinction, but the perceptibility ofthe sampled material also figures quite strongly. It is significant that Sanjek is writing in the context ofthe legal implications ofsampling. Providing "proofofpiracy" in the "Age of Plunder" puts an emphasis on the perceptibility ofa copy in relation to a notion ofthe listener; it is the prior exposure to a given sound by the listener and the listener's memory ofit that will determine what sampling does, that is, whether the sound conjures up a specific song or musician, refers to a general style, or whether it is interpreted as original or a recurrence. The typology suggests that, whatever sampling is claimed to do in terms ofsubversion, communication, exhaustion, stealing, or contributing, it does this in relation to a listener who may or may not care whether the sounds she/he is hearing were recorded or re recorded. All ofthe types involve sorne combination ofnew material and a repetition which varies in its obscurity or familiarity. This attention to fami liarity indicates a conceptualization ofthe audience and its knowledge ofmusic in the act ofsampling or producing sample-based music. It draws attention to the relationship between sampling and the interpretive frameworks and the conventions/contexts ofits audience through which it is reactivated. It refutes the notion that sampling, even in its most eclectic forms, is random, unplanned, or that practitioners are indifferent to their audience. Attentiveness to familiarity in both legal contexts and in DI culture also indicates the way in which the perception ofrepetition depends on the familiarity or knowledge ofthe listener. To put it in plain terms, repetition is necessarily temporal but the time frame ofthis repetition can be used to stratify listening positions and knowledges. The meaning and value ofrepetition can be observed at the intersection ofthe textual analysis ofrepetition in music and the analysis ofthe discourse ofinnovation. The analysis ofinterviews with DIs and musicians is rife with modem aesthetic solutions to repetition, the third option suggested by Snead. In an article on Englishjungle/drum 'n' bass producer Gerald Simpson (a.k.a. A Guy Called Gerald), Neil Young writes, "I1's ironic though; after a five-year hiatus, one offuture music's most progressive artists is dropping an album in a style that sorne consider passé" (23). Simpson himself suggests that this is a strategy for escaping the perennial fashion cycles ofdance music culture: 31
"The British Press are hair dressers. They're just looking for the latest style. l'm looking at music on a culturallevel, not on a fashion level" (Ibid.). Within such tight discursive quarters (for Simpson and Young, fashion is below the level ofculture altogether), how can sampling be practised in a credible way? Eco suggests that a work is "well done" according to the modem aesthetic criteria when it displays the following two characteristics:
1. It must achieve a dialectic between order and novelty - in other words, between scheme and innovation;
2. This dialectic must be perceived by the consumer, who must not only grasp the contents ofthe message, but also the way in which the message transmits those contents.
This being the case, nothing prevents the types ofrepetition listed above from achieving the conditions necessary to the realization ofaesthetic value (174-5).
Eco points out how the aesthetic ofrepetition is made to confonn to the modem conception ofaesthetic value ofnovelty or "high infonnation". The preference for the intratextual repetition ofmicrosamples seems to be, on the one hand, an extremely accessible principle ofvariability. But at another level, this is not the case; the samples are taken from obscure records that are identifiably intertextual only by a relatively small discursive community. The aesthetic ofrepetition in sampling centers around the manipulation or editing ofthe perceptibility ofthe copy as a repetition ofthe familiar (a déjà entendu) through sound processing. Take for example dance musicproducer Chris Coco's remarks about the process ofsampling in a very successful dance track from 2001:
With the sample our aim was to take something people might know and distort it as much as possible - it's too easy just to loop a well known sample. The clip from Sister Sledge's "lost in Music" was sampled and edited on an old Akai S3000 sampler and then filtered to take out sorne frequencies and place it lower in the mix so that the sample is not shouting at you.
When we got really excited, though, was when-we started mucking about and moving the starting plaéè ofthe sample. Its starts offsaying, 'music, music, music, ' and then twists round to 'sic-mu, sic-mu, sic-mu,' and then becomes 'c'mus-si, c 'mu-si, c 'mu-si' .
The beat is solid all the way through but because the voice is not roHing with the beat you get disorientated and that's what makes it work so well on the 32
dancefloor. It's just playing around with people's heads, really, which is always a good thing to dO. 15
Not only does Coco use combinations ofnew and sampled material, but the sampled material's familiarity is subjected to extensive "mucking about." Three Ieve1s ofseriality can be distinguished here. First is the level ofcrafting a variation ofa dance music track ofa particular subgenre. The second level ofrepetition is in the appropriation offamiliar material, and at this level the familiar is purposely made unfamiliar and impossible to recognize. But at the third level, there is the repetition ofthe sample within the track, which is a kind ofdisplay ofthe range ofvariability offered by sampling and sound processing technology as well as a demonstration ofthe competence ofthe "non musician". Intertextual repetition offers the audience the pleasure ofrecognizing or recovering "point by point, what they already know, and what they want to know again" (Eco, 164). This level ofrepetition is intentionally thwarted through filtering, cutting, reordering the familiar material so that it can no longer be perceived as a repetition or recurrence. In contrast the seriated pattern constituted by repetition and transfonnation of the sampled fragment can be recognized even by an audience that does not possess extensive knowledge about popular music because the sound repeats and morphs within relatively small time frame ofthe track. The aesthetic criteria according to which these repetitious strategies are fonnulated are not invented by the practitioners ofsampling but accompany the notions ofthe audience which they internalize. Coco hints at one such notion ofthe listener as club clientele. In their particular state ofdistraction within the sensory environment of the dance club, the club clientele takes pleasure in variations ofrepeated sounds within the time frame ofthe track itse1f, as opposed to over the course ofone's life as songs are "covered" by different musicians and used in different social contexts. The example demonstrates the difficulty ofgeneralizing the repetitious strategy or approach to repetition even within a particular track. On the one hand, in keeping with the modem aesthetic criteria, these kinds ofuses ofsampled material do not lend themselves to the ontologieal security ofkitsch but rather, Iike the seriaI products discussed by Eco, challenge the listener "to acknowledge the innovative aspects ofthe text" (175). However, looked at as a whole, dance tracks are seriaI products, enabling the same basic scheme to be enjoyed in countless variations. Finally, at this extreme end in the repetitious strategies ofsampling, the intensification ofsound-morphing is motivated
15 Mix:mag, April, 2001: 37. 33 by the modem aesthetic value ofinnovation which urges technical replication away from exact repetition. So although sound-morphing evidences a formaI principle ofvariability producing not only seria! works but also seriated musical motifs, this "neo-baroque aesthetic" tends to be distinguished in DJ and sampling discourse from the seriaI products ofthe "pop mainstream". This poses a problem for the smooth transition proposed by Eco from modem to post-modem aesthetics through the formaI principle ofvariability or seriality. Sample-based dance music shares with other kinds ofseriaI cultural forms the use ofproportions ofrepetition and innovation, but in the discursive constructions ofthe musical practice the notion oforiginality holds a particular significance. As Thomton (1995) argues, dance musicians and deejays "elevate their cultures above the realm of mass culture, media and commerce" (31). This is typical1y manifested in the urge away from the repetition associated with the organized music industry, and notions of originality-through-copying compel samplers and remixers to avoid the "too easy" appropriation offamiliar sonie material without mixing it with one's creative labor, or "mucking about". In Chris Coco's recipe for functional sample-based dance music, the "building" oftracks through copying is not so much a spectacular gesture ofresistance to the finished text or to notions oforiginality and propriety, but rather Coco c1early values, and presumes that his audience appreciates, the filtering, defacing, fragmenting, reversing ofthe repeated form. At the very least, this demonstrate that it is not just copyright law which compels innovation but rather the aesthetic values ofdiscursive communities which motivate the exploitation ofinfinite variability ofreproduced sound. It is impossible to understand how this "third option, this conjuncture ofan aesthetic ofrepetition and modem aesthetic values, without considering the technological and institutional environment in which this conjuncture occurs. The legal concems and the indices ofcredibility peculiar to DJ culture have important implications for the meaning and value ofrepetition. The value ofinnovation within and without legal regimes ofcopying shape the stylistic conventions ofsampling. l now tum to historieal moments in which different sets ofpractical conditions, notions ofthe audience, approaches ta repetition and copying as well as aesthetic criteria have altered the alignment ofappropriation with seriality and repetition.
The Transformation ofLegal Constraints into FormaI Principles
My exploration ofthis aesthetic ofcovert sampling in this chapter is motivated in part by Eco's quotation from Giovanna Grignaffini who nGted that "the neobaroque aesthetics 34 has transformed a commercial constraint into a 'formaI principle'" (181). The new aesthetics ofseriality discussed by Italian scholars in the 1980s was understood to be irreducible to the efficiency oftheir production because oftheir "agreement" with audience dispositions. In short, the new aesthetics ofseriality were shaped according to an intemalized notion ofthe audience with a new aesthetic sensibility ofrigid formalism comparable to baroque aesthetics. My question in this chapter is how the legal constraint ofappropriative practices in the electronic mode ofmusic-making has been transposed into the formaI principles of"artistic" or "creative" sampling. Frith's (1987) sweeping affirmation ofsampling, home taping, etc., as guerrilla warfare tactics gives sorne indication ofthe early reception ofsampling as a threat to notions oforiginality and propriety in the record industry. Today it is difficult to 16 understand how sampling, which is now ubiquitous in popular music , could have ever been perceived as dangerous to the record industry. Over time, the notion oforiginality was reproduced and transformed in the arena ofsampling, and sampling styles were also shaped by notions oforiginality. As DJ Premiere, a well-known hip hop producer puts it, "Back in the day, we just looped. Now you need to take it to the next level and keep it fresh" (Mitchell, 2000). Another hip hop producer, Timbaland, suggests that the formaI principle ofvariability is an aesthetic solution to the problem ofliability:
We try to make it different each time. 1don't advise anyone to sample. No matter how small you think the sample is and no one will notice. Sometimes, 1think they have people listening to a record just to see ifthe music came from somewhere else (Ibid.).
This notion ofthe audience as sample police brings originality into the process of copying. The disparity between "back in the day" and "now" perceived by DJ Premiere may not be entirely nostalgic. In fact, the idea ofauthoring sound has had implications for both the discourse, style and practices ofsampling. The tendency towards variability rather than exact repetition is reinforced by the concem with creation and ownership not just ofthe recordings but ofthe samples themselves. As drum 'n' bass producer Goldie puts it,
1base a whole tune on live performances, 1just don't want anyone to have the sound 1get, 1 feel sick if1hear someone using the same samples as me. 1 feel embarrassed. No one can have identical sounds as me because 1record them live
16 Except ofcourse those bands that make a point ofdeclaring their "sampler-free" methods inside their album covers. such as the American rock group Rage Against the Machine. Frith's (1986) suggestion that the depolarization of technology and self-expression is complete may in this sense seem a bit premature. 35
and sample them - ifs a vision! 1take it back and sample it and put it back into the computer (qtd. in Zuberi, 2001: 178).
Goldie detaches replication from repetition, apparently producing his samples from scratch. Sampling has not dissolved notions oforiginality and propriety but has mutated them according to what Théberge (1997) calls the new "sound aesthetic". Authorial marks are made not prior to, but within, the process ofrecording, and this has become a legally recognized mode ofauthorship. Paralleling his typology ofkinds ofsample-based music, Sanjek's analysis ofthe American legal framework that regulates sampling emphasizes not only the "nature ofthe appropriation" but also the quantity ofsampled material. American copyright law also recognizes the variability in the intention behind the copying ofthe material. Sanjek points out that the Sound Recording Act (1971) in the US was a response to the perceived threat ofrevenue loss that cassette recorders seemed to pose. Prior to this Act, sound was not protected under copyright because it was intangible without sound recording technology. With home recording capabilities inaugurated by the consumer cassette tape, sound recordings were not only tangible, but easily replicable by people other than the record label or artist that made the original recording. One major change that the Sound Recording Act made was that it considered the recording itself to be a "work" and thus extended authorship to people involved in the recording process other than the composer. A statement made during the Senate Committee hearings on the Sound Recording Act is suggestive ofa shift away from what Lury (1993) caUs the concept ofthe author-as-originator: "The bill does not fix authorship, or the resulting ownership, ofsound recordings, but leaves these matters to the employment relationship and bargaining among the interests involved,,17. However, as Sanjek points out, this apparent ambiguity ofauthorship is regulated by the recording industry, which usually "pays each ofthe 'authors' ofa recording, thereby allowing the record label to be the sole possessor ofcopyright" (355). Thus, while the Act seems to disperse authorship to "performers, engineers and manufacturers" (Sanjek, 355), the ambiguity in the Act enabled the concentration ofownership ofthe rights to recordings in the record company. Thus, most ofthe potential authors work on a wage basis and have no part ofthe copyright. As Lury (1993) points out in the culture industries more generaUy, this leads to a situation where the credit list performs a different function that the attribution ofindividual authorship in earlier systems ofintellectual property,
17 Sanjek does not specify who said this, only that "the following statement was made" (355). He provides the citation though: H.R. REP. No. 487, 92d Cong., 1" Sess. (1971). 3S centering instead around those who can "lay effective claim to having made a contribution to the commercial 'effects' of a cultural good" (53-4). The Sound Recording Act of 1971 indicates a shift in the locus ofrights from composers ta the organizer ofthe creative labor that produces the recording, that is, either the record company or the producer. The Act institutionalizes the sound recording as the protected "work," which is not reducible to the performance or to the composition ofthe music. However, the drafters ofthe 1971 Act could not foresee the development of digital technologies ofreplication. Whereas the 1971 Act was designed ta regulate the copying ofwhole songs, digital technologies made the manipulation ofbits and pieces of sangs much easier than manually splicing magnetic tape. Whole songs could then be produced using fragments ofsound recordings that were protected by an Act that defined piracy in terms ofthe unauthorized reproduction ofwhole songs. The consequence was that plaintiffs had to provide "proofofpiracy," that is, that "the new work is 'substantially similar' to the original" (355). This has proved to be a difficult process, relying on hazy notions ofthe hook or essence to identify substantial similarity. These hazy notions are however extremely important in the way legal action can be taken against sampling when it uses significant amounts ofthe original so as ta "damage" it. More importantly, appropriation can be prosecuted if it is demonstrable that the copy affects the marketability ofthe original (Sanjek 356). The emphasis on marketability in proving piracy is representative ofthe way in which the organized relations ofthe music industry require creative workers to distinguish themselves from other kinds oflabor by proving they have contributed to the commercial effects ofthe work (Lury, 1993: 53-4). The 1971 Act's refusaI to fix authorship has not meant that creative labour and other kinds oflabour have been entirely de-differentiated, but that "these differences are maintained by other, perhaps more indirect, means" (Ibid. 53). Lury suggests that the changes in intellectual property laws are shifting the locus of authorship from notions of "creative will to intellectual effort (and this is defined, rather minimally, as the making of a choice)" (52). While the limited memory ofmany early samplers might explain the use oftiny fragments ofsound, the samplers ofthe late 1980s and-1990s, not to mention software studios, make it possible to copy entire songs, albums or libraries in high-quality sound. The tendency towards short fragments in sample-based music cannot be explained by digital memory limitations, nor can this technological factor account for the preference for obscure records and heavily treated or processed copies. 1 suggest that appropriation in the era of sampling has been shaped by the crite:-ia through which "substantial 37 similarity", "proofofpiracy", "marketability" and "commercial effects" are legally identified. The tendency towards this aesthetic of"mircosamples" taken from obscure records and processed beyond recognizability is guided by the concern with providing signs ofcreative labor in the practice ofappropriati Sampling has changed because oflegalities. There are sample police out there now. So 1go about it the harder way: 1scientifically put things together and try to be as original as possible. On Biggie's '10 Crack Commandments,' that loop is me sampling my scratchingby hand. It was me experimenting, and it sounded dope. Sometimes, l'll chop a loop into so many pieces and if it doesn't work, l'll save it and try again later. IfI'm alone, 1can get a sample figured out sometimes in 10 minutes - or a day. Ifnot, 1hang around with my guys and talk/argue about different breaks and loops (Mitchell, 2000). Interestingly, the time-consuming labor ofsound processing itself, a methodology that intentionally makes machinic replication more difficult, enables copying to be creative and samples to be coded as original or unique. Exact, lengthy and recognizable repetitions are avoided because they are felt to be perceptible by the notion ofthe audience as sample police. Exact repetition is also stigmatized as too easy; it signifies craftiness rather than craft. Another strategy Premiere mentions is to sample oneself. Similarly, Edward "Eddie" Ferrell (hip hop and r 'n' b producer, Mary 1. Blige, Donell Jones, among other big names) attributes self-sampling a very high value oforiginality: You don't want to give up 25% ofa song or sometimes 50% because it's just a piece or line in a song. But people [songwriters] have the right to ask for that. The days ofusing the whole record are pretty much over. People are tired ofgoing through the clearance procedure. One thing 1really like now is that a lot ofhip hop remixes are using live musicians and original sounds. Dr. Dre, Timbaland, Cash Money and Swizz Beats are aIl doing melodic material and not using samples (Ibid.). - Paradoxically, Premiere, who has made a career out ofsampling, contributes to a strand ofanti-appropriationist discourse. The predominant sample-aesthetic ofhip hop and dance music gravitates towards "live" (studio-made) sounds and obscure records for source material, and when familiar material is used it is made unfamiliar through an array 38 oftechnical procedures. Thus, hiding repetition through processing is also motivated by the need to demonstrate originality through the process ofre-recording. Again, Ferrell is instructive in this matter: Do it in a way where it's unique. Try to disguise it as much as you can - not to the point where you're trying to hide il. But do it in a way that's new, with a refreshing groove. There will still be people who sample from time to time, but they'll use it artistically and stick around as real quality, the cream ofthe crop. That's where sampling is going (Ibid.). Appropriation never quite undermines the notion ofsound as property. In fact the tendency in sampling has been to find ways ofmaking substantial contributions to the commercial effects ofa sound so as to make it the property ofthe copyist/mixer. The quality sample is that which disguises without hiding the original. This line, a rather tenuous one indeed, is routinely crossed as sounds are reduced to fractions ofseconds, taken from records that only the most dedicated aficionado would recognize, and dispersed throughout the track. Although sound processing can make the familiar unrecognizable, perhaps the most effective means ofediting the perception ofa copy as an original is through careful selection; it is difficult to identify a copy when such a small community ofcollectors and DJs has heard the original. In the de- and re-signingl8 ofsound into proprietary relations, however, a new approach to music-making can be observed. Frith (1987) points out that "Originality, in short, can be difficult to define in a business in which similarity (the hit formula) is at a premium" (64). Indeed, in the practice ofsampling there are a number ofdifferent strategies and discursive frameworks that enable copyists to make claims to originality. But one ofthe most significant shifts can be observed in those instances where originality is not defined in opposition to copying as it is in copyright law. Frith points out there is a discrepancy between the legal definition oforiginality and the practice ofassessing it "in terms ofnineteenth-century musical convention" (64). We can see this discrepancy in DJ culture, especially in the anti-appropriationist reversions to sampling oneself, but the bulk ofthe rationalisations ofsampling point to the labour-intensive investment ofskill and the intellectuallabour ofselection in the process ofgenerating unique copies. This is 18 In "De-Signing" (200 l), Hillel Schwartz describes a series oftactics for exposing the craftiness ofail kinds ofdesign (even though he wrote the paper originally for a design conference in Aspen), from artworks, to plan and plots, to conspiracies, etc. Glare, transparency, defacement, surfeit, were a few of the tactics he listed to trouble the design ofauthenticity and the containment of meaning. Here 1 am using the terms in reference to signatures and contractual agreements concerning the ownership ofthe rights to cultural works. 39 originality-through-copying, an "independent effort" ofa copyist to produce a unique verSIOn. Secrecy, Selection and Sampling: The Ties that Bind the DJ Star System We have seen how both technological and legal forms have been transposed into the formaI principles ofintratextual repetition and microsampling. I have shown how these formaI principles articulate the historically specifie legal and commercial concems of practitioners, concems which are related to the instability ofthe concept oforiginality through-copying. I have only yet touched upon the way in which the value ofinnovation and the pursuit (and the daims to forecasting) of future progress in underground music cultures reinforces the cover-up oftemporal replication and sorne kinds ofintertextuality. Here I examine in more detail the ways in which the use ofsamplers as tèchnologies of authorship has been implicated in the heightened value and mystification ofthe act of selection in underground DJ culture. This section will develop more fully the point that has only been hinted at in this chapter so far, that is, that the covert sampling styles characteristic ofthe last decade of hip hop and dance music are not reducible to the technological and legal environrnent. I will re-examine the two main components ofthe Art ofdeejaying - selection and processing - which I mentioned earlier and show how they work to reproduce distinctions between the DJ-auteurs and their audience. I argue that the kinds oforiginality enforced in DJ culture go much further than legal and commercial institutions demand. Ifwe are to understand the shift in sampling styles described by "Eddie" Ferrell and DJ Premiere, then the analysis ofthe institutional environment should not end with copyright law. Sampling styles have conformed to the aesthetic values ofthe professional DJ community that both produces and promotes these records. With an attentiveness to the peculiarities ofDJ culture's regime ofcopying, we can see that the covert sampling aesthetic produces distinctions between original and unoriginal DJs and works by concealing the rather ordinary knowledge that is absolutely crucial to their work. Gregory Ulmer (1983) and Lury (1993) have argued in different contexts that creativity now centers around the "intellectual" act ofselecting, rather than the mysterious meta-world implied by "creation from nothingness". As Redhead (1995) puts it, sampling and home taping are being variously defined as "theft" or as "part ofthe thinking processes ofa creative subject" (56). He suggests that one outcome has been that "the legal subject ofthe creative process... is more and more difficult to identify" (57). This certainly resonantes with the authoring ofsound recordings, where the sound 40 engineer is the person who "fixes" and thus authors (at least in part) the work. More specifically, the DJ culture ofhip hop and dance music has, as Reynolds puts it, been the cultural site ofthe "displacement ofcreativity from the artist to the tumtable selector" (l998b: 275). The authority ofthe figure ofthe Dl in this aesthetic ofsampling is reinforced from all sides: This is the person who often produces these records, into whose unique sound they are invested, to whom they are sometimes dedicated in the titling oftracks, for whose mode ofreactivation they are designed, and to whom they must appeal in order to reach the broader club clientele. Furthermore, in skeusomorphic fashion, the sampler has been used like a set oftumtables and a mixer. 19 In sampling, for example, DJ techniques are deployed to produce discrete and material sonic properties rather than DJ sets performed for club audiences. To put the matter somewhat differently, the professional culture ofDJs and their interpretive conventions are intemalized by the practitioners ofsampling. In a 1991 interview, the now-famous New York DJ-producer Moby denounced the hegemony played by Frankie Knuckles and other star DJs in dictating the stylistic direction ofthe New York nightdub scene. A Dl ofthe "new generation", Moby instead intemalizes his own DJ persona as his audience: "1 make records that hopefully as a DJ rd like to play. The idea of [DJs] getting interested enough to actually play them boggIes me" (11). The practice ofsampling and the Art ofdeejaying which regulates it is based on the connoisseurship ofthe Dl's discursive community. Straw (1995) argues that this connoisseur culture "perpetually produces hierarchies ofskill within the present and so recreates the basis for ongoing progress, with the most knowing or effective of borrowings received as clues to the directions most appropriate for future development" (254). This clarifies the discursive means by which DJs subordinate repetitious strategies and generic formulas in dance music to the maintenance ofthe illusion ofprogress. Indeed, while the sampler enables the craft ofdeejaying to be disconnected from real-time mixing, the discourse ofdeejaying and sampling both tend to privilege the unfarniliar or exclusive record and instinctual foresight pertaining to the historieal trajectory ofstyle rather than cultivated knowledge ofgenre conventions. The replication ofDJ technique in sample-based record production has been accompanied by the ongoing dep:ial that the information required to make this music can be easily obtained by reading music magazines and playlists. "What is at stake here," 19 This is an argument that can be found in many discussions of the origins of the sampling aesthetic and practice (Poschardt and Sanjek put forth similar ideas, and Hebdige (1987) and Frith (1986) go further to suggest that deejay technique was replicated across geographical boundaries as well). More relevant to this thesis is the argument made by both Thomton and Fikentscher who suggest that the recording of Dl mixing marks a shift the status ofthe Dl and ofhis/her creative labour. 41 argues Straw (1995), "as with any self-defined hip community, is the extent to which connoisseurist knowledges may be codified for easy acquisition" (251). He observes that the "material culture which surrounds disc jockey work has produced a whole set of relations to information which are, to varying degrees, intentionally concealed" (Ibid.). So the preference for the obscure record as source material in sampling is also determined by the social divisions maintained by the secrecy ofDJ culture. The small-scale distribution ofun-signed white-labels and "test press" acetates produced through sampling also ensure a continuous stream ofpartially concealed information. For selection to be coded as the creative act, secrecy is required to maintain distinctions between DJs who select records and those who copy the selections ofothers. Secrecy is crucial between DJs, so that one's selections can be perceived as a unique mix. In a 1992 interview, the beginning ofthe ascent ofBritish DJ team Parks and Wilson to star-status is discernable in their claim to be able to play whatever they want: We could play anything really from garage [house] to the hardest stuff in the country. What's happened with us is that we've formed this mixture, which people now recognise, so that we're not pigeon-holed for only one particular style ofmusic (DlMagazine, July 1992: 14). Although Parks and Wilson suggest that their subgenre-hopping selections have enabled their unique mixture to become recognizable and sought-after, their freedom to choose without regard for genres (or the expectations oftheir audience) is afforded by the existence of a star-DJ system in the first place. The existence ofthis system ofcelestial DJs was noted in a DlMagazine article on English DJ Sasha in 1992, who was by then aIready a "name DJ": Sasha's youth, good looks and rough diamond charm have made him the perfect person to fill acres ofcolumn inches. Whilst his meteoric rise from playing seedy clubs into present day media has helped replace the old image ofthe DJ as a dowdy trainspotter with a new public perception ofthe DJ as potential pin-up (December, 1992: 20) The image is enhanced, according to Sasha by staying away from "obvious records" (already popular records the use ofwhich is associated with laziness) and towards "unexpected toe-tappers". DJs frequently shift attention away from knowledge of differences between genres by emphasizing the intuitive ability to sequence and blend one record into the next and to forecast the progress ofstyles or genres: "Beat mixing [matching the tempos ofrecords and mixing them together] should he second nature if 42 you're going to be a Dl," Sasha insists. The difficult part, he says is "finding records that go together musically so as the mix happens not only are the beats mixing but the music in the two tunes actually compliments each other so that you get a musical mix" (Ibid.). The notion that the selection ofrecords by Dls is a form ofself-expression is historically specifie. As Thomton has pointed out, the relative distance from economic imperatives on which this idea ofselection-as-creative is premised has only taken shape in recent years. These economic imperatives are, furthermore, still in place for less celestial Dls. Kevin Saunderson, credited with being one ofseveral "originators" ofthe Detroit techno genre, puts the matter in perspective. Asked ifthere might be an economic incentive for continuing to deejay at clubs, he replied: "No, not at aU! That was only for a short period when l was at university" (DJ Magazine, luly, 1992: 8). The interviewer then asks ifthat makes a difference. Saunderson replies: "Maybe, ifsomeone's telling you what to play, ifyou need the money you're going to do it. Ifyou don't you're going to tell them to F offl" (Ibid.). Saunderson's description ofthe economic constraints of disc selection over the course ofhis career describes to sorne extent the overall history of Dl culture [rom tumtable operators to auteurs and godstars. When the definition oforiginality is thus bound up with knowing what to select, as it is in late Dl culture, secrecy becomes crucial to uniqueness. As Premiere puts it: A true purist won't tell where he gets his old records because he doesn't want others raping that store. But l'm totally a fan ofthe records l sample. l read the musician credits and labels and listen to the entire album for sounds. The secret information guiding the selection as the creative act is not the sonic information inscribed in the records, but the links between artists, Dls, track titles, producers, remixers, pseudonyms, white labels, bootlegs, record labels, clubs, subgenres, and the record stores where they can be bought. Thus, the pleasures ofthis aesthetic are divided along two interpretive frameworks: one which is valorized by Dl culture and is afforded by the access to information about what is a sample and what is not, where these samples come from, what they are referencing; and another which is afforded by the repetition within the text itself, on intratextual rather than intertextual repetition. Dl culture continually ensures the existence ofthese two tistening positions through both its secrecy and its aesthetic criteria that guides the selection ofsamples. To reiterate, the notion ofselection as creative is one ofthe principles on which the art ofdeejaying, and thus sampling, has been established. As we have seen, speech about music displays certain aspects ofDl work. Intuition has been attributed a high place in Dl culture at both the micro and macro lev el ofstyle: for sensing what record 43 should follow then last, what sample should be recast anew, and for deciphering the path towards stylistic perfection in the future. What tends to be covered over is the importance ofknowing the difference between genres (between hip hop and dance music) or subgenres (such as "progressive house" from "garage house") in underground Dl culture. In fact, there is often hostility towards the very idea ofgenre in interviews with Dls. This ,>.,~ ~ pattern ofcovering the importance ofgenre is consistent with Hesmondhalgh's observation about the displacement ofgenre by author in industries that become organised around star systems. The secrecy ofthe banal but crucial knowledge about credit lists, record labels, and record stores is readily observable in the covering over of titles and names with a permanent marker on records, preventing "trainspotters" (amateur Djs, fans, and aficionados who stand around the Dl booth watching and memorizing the information on records as the Dl puts them on the turntables) from reading this information and thus replicating the unique set. But the shroud ofsecrecy is also maintained by the foregrounding ofother kinds ofless ordinary knowledge. Star Dls often frame their work in the most traditional kinds ofmusical terms. As the star DJ Paul Oakenfold, who is the only DJ to have ever been the opening act for one ofU2's world tours, puts it: What makes a good DJ stand out is knowing about keys and arrangements, structure and depth... There's a few guys who really follow the art ofmixing, the art ofblending... not many people know how to blend records and make records speak to each other. Make music out ofmusic... You can elevate people just from the power of a mix, you can make people believe in you, truly believe in you (qtd. in Reynolds, 1998b: 273). My argument is that this kind ofsnobbish statement (making the Art ofdeejaying available to those who have mastered music theory) is not simply afforded by star status but is a part ofthe discursive operations that have enab1ed Dls to become stars in the first place. At the very least, it can be observed in the cross-section ofthe unique Dl offered by Oakenfold (what makes himlher "stand out") that there are skills and knowledges in addition to selection which are considered key to the Art ofdeejaying that have to do with the authorship ofa DJ image. Sound processing on a desktop computer may not engage the body in the same way as traditional music-making, but practitioners make property daims partly by emphasizing not just the "intellectual" act ofselecting sounds, but the duration ofthe process oflifting, building, modifying, mixing and fixing sounds, as weIl as the mysteriously acquired sense ofmusical "depth" that, implicitly, separates the Art from the 44 Craft ofdeejaying. This array ofprocedures identified as a creative process is shaped in part by what Redhead (1995) has called the blurring of"the role of musician/DJ/producer/engineer". The direction ofthis blurring is significant: musicians are not being framed in terrns ofDJ labor, but DJs are increasingly being framed in traditional musical terrns. Speech about music in interviews and "how'd they get that sound?" recipes like Chris Coco's are indispensable as discursive constructions ofthe copyist as a new creative subject. The ordinariness of"mucking about" with already-recorded sound has, however, been accompanied by a concern with being properly musical. Speech about music makes perceptible what Welchman (2001) caUs the "invisibility already associated with craft in general", that is, the "unsung, labor-intensive, personal-yet-anonymous investments ofcraft, long vilified or disparaged by the high-art tradition". It is not surprising that underground DJ culture, which views itself as separate and superior to the popular mainstream, should obscure the labor and pleasure ofsound processing with the glare ofselection framed in terrns of"academic" musical expertise, especially as this culture reaches its "late" phase ofcelestial DJ virtuosos. As the mode ofappropriation becomes point-and-click and the copies themselves vanish under the traces ofintensive sound processing, speech about sampling becornes an increasingly important medium for making the skills and labor ofcopying perceptible. It is also in speech about music where the idea ofsampling as an eclectic, random, and fluid aesthetic is problematized. In "Technologies ofAuthorship in Disco," (1995) Krasnow writes, The idea ofdiscursive coherence received a further blow from disco's refusaI to confine itselfstylistically. Not only did individual songs plunder older styles, themes and tunes, but across its range oftunes disco refused the boundaries of genre. The only generic element in disco was the beat. Aside from that, there was no characteristic principle. Anything that was successful on the dance floor was disco... disco was a very fluid, varied "genre" indeed, and one that did away with romantic notions ofartistic and generic coherence, recognizing instead that many discourses are simultaneously present in our cultural memory (182). Krasnow's daim that DJ culture is the site ofthe disappearance ofthe author is historically specifie to a particular moment in the 1970s when such practices were not yet perceived as properly musical.20 It is a useful as a point for comparison. What 1have traced out in contemporary discourses in DJ culture is the way the construction ofDJ 20 Krasnow writes, "Into this play of clips and surfaces the author disappeared" (183). 45 authors/stars has been established partly by obscuring the operations that make instances ofsound objects unique and partly by establishing links between the sound's apparent uniqueness and the expertise and labor ofthe DJ. The discourse ofsampling in hip hop and dance music does not elevate the aleatory, but rather valorizes what Straw has called the careful selection ofthe "canonical groove" from obscure records. These obscure records are in fact the material basis on which the culture ofprototypes, one-offs and test-presses (unavailable to the public) is reproduced in DI culture. In speech about music, 1have traced out a rather rigid formalism that is directly opposed to the "too easy" fluidity ofsampling the familiar. Selection and editing are highly regulated procedures in the new creative process of copying. Furthermore, raising selection as the pillar ofDJ expertise has in turn required secrecy to maintain the links between unique sounds and individual DJ personalities. Conclusion The discourse ofthe Art ofdeejaying (what constitutes a "creative" or "artistic" DJ and what comprises a "well-done" sample, mix, or remix) has reached a new extreme, and it is intertwined with the construction not only ofDJ authorship but ofa DJ star system. We have seen how microsampling works to install the DJ as an "origin" for creative works in "late" DJ culture. If, as David Hesmondhalgh has argued, the long-standing and proud lack ofinterest in authorship in DJ culture was afforded by their audience's interest in genre and sub-genre distinctions, in record labels, and in subtle stylistic shifts, then what does the more recent obsession with authorship in contemporary DJ culture suggest about the interests ofaudiences and DJs? Hesmondhalgh suggests that the development ofa DJ star system coincides with the erosion ofgenre as the main system ofdifferentiation and the internalization ofthe audience as consumers (or as a market). In contrast to the lesser-known DJs and to earlier DJ cultural formations, the new DJ godstars are making their bid for the "beyond genre" status ofpop stars. In the final analysis, Hesmondhalgh writes, "the impulse towards a greater concern with authorship represents a recognition on the part oflabel owners, promoters and so on oftheir own economic interests" (247). 1would add and perhaps recenter Hesmondhalgh's list around the star-DJs, who are also record promoters, label owners and so on. 1have suggested that authorial (proprietary) claims to sound in DJ culture has depended upon the redeployment ofnotions oforiginality and the redefinition ofthe creative act in relation to DJ culture's practices ofcopying and connoisseurist values. 46 This chapter has detailed the way in which stylistic shifts in sampling are articulations ofthis historically specifie concem with authorship on the part ofDJs. l have used the term articulation because the aesthetics ofmicrosampling are not simply reflections ofeconomic shifts in the dance or hip hop industries but rather they are methodologies for making c1aims to the commercial effects ofsound. Further, as a central part ofthe broader discourse ofthe Art ofdeejaying, covert or micro-sampling has enabled the construction ofthe figure ofthe DJ as a creative subject, differentiated and elevated from other agents in the process ofcultural reproduction. The Art ofdeejaying has re-centered expertise and originality around selection and, to a lesser extent, around the technical processes ofsound morphing. The stratification of expertise communicates the social order, among other ways, by re-tracing and sharpening distinctions between kinds oflabor, agents, and works. Selection and editing have been reframed as the creative processes, and thus sampling styles are themselves a kind oftechnology for the production ofnew kinds ofsonic property such as the unique sound ofthe DJ, the DJ mix CD, the sample-based dance music track, and the obscure and processed sample itself. As we have seen, one of"works" authored by the DJ is the image and not just the unique sound. When familiar or popular records are used, they are understood to be instrumental in the development ofa DJ image. DJ Sasha's remarks from two years ago are suggestive ofthe authorship ofthis new DJ "work": "You drop one tune in a night that's totally different and it will stick in people's heads and they'll go home remembering that you played that tune" (DJ Magazine, December 1992: 20). A second shift in the "work" can be further traced out by means ofthe example of one ofmy favorite techno-musical personalities, Richard James (a.k.a. Polygon Window, The Aphex Twin, etc.) who is famous for, among other things, inviting bootleggers to bootleg his tracks, re-title them, re-sign them, and send them out for distribution. Curiously, this apparent lack ofinterest in authorship is tempered by his paranoid secrecy evident in interviews about his musical methodologies, not just information pertaining to his samples or where he takes them from, but also how he samples and edits them, and the specifics about his custom built samplers on which he performs these mysterious operations. Like aIl forms ofauthorship, Richard James's auteur and godstar status is dependent upon regimes ofcopxing and interpretive interventions for framing sorne kind oflabor as creative and for differentiating between copied or derivative works and originals. By offering his work to be copied while at the same time taking a vow of silence conceming his practices ofcopying, James places the mysterious Art ofdeejaying (what makes his sound unique) in the process ofselection and editing. Replicating his method ofcopying would thus dither the links between his work and his sound. 47 In contemporary hip hop and dance music culture, the enculturation ofreplication and playback technologies as legitimate means ofmaking artistic "works" and the displacement oforiginality into appropriative practices has meant that authorship is being redefined not "refused". Contrary to Frith (1986), 1have suggested that the finished work is not simply dissolved in appropriative practices, but that it is the seriaI products ofthe mainstream which are continually denigrated as appropriative practices engage (select and deface) sound in such a way as to produce the unique, the original, the innovative and propnetary• copy. 21 The concem with authorship certainly has an economic or commercial impetus, but 1have suggested here that DJ culture has also enforced notions oforiginality in excess 22 ofwhat the industry and the 1aw demands . In the next chapter, 1 explore a similar stylistic trajectory in remixing away from the repetitious strategies ofthe long-standing dance remix formula, towards those remix methodologies that demonstrate "total production" skills and stage the DJ godstar as a creative subject beyond the constraints of genre. 21 Frith asserts, "post-punk musicians have challenged the idea ofthe fini shed product" (1986: 273). 22 Given the widespread use of sampling and the burgeoning genres that use sampling as a central means of making music, it is rernarkable how few of the legal actions taken against unauthorised reproduction have involved sampling. As countless cases of bootleg and other unauthorised re-recordings have shown, the record companies that own the rights to these copied works are quite open to authorising the unauthorised ifit seems to have sorne kind of commercial viability, much to the displeasure of the "proper" musicians credited with the composition and performance ofthe originals. 48 CHAPTER THREE: Covering Your Tracks in the Art of Remixing In the last chapter 1 showed how the sampler was activated in DJ culture to replicate DJ techniques ofmixing the already-recorded. It also became evident that sampling was coded in DJ culture as offering more creative control, self-expression and the production ofdiscrete sonic properties. 1 argued that the cover up ofcopying in sampling styles was motivated in part by the particular legal and commercial context ofDJ culture. DJs were shown to be quite vocal about the way their practices were altered by the looming threat ofcopyright violation and the loss ofan opportunity to make a living from their musical practice. 1then highlighted the way originality and creativity were articulated through DJ style and methods, and how the peculiarities ofthese articulations could not be reduced to legal and commercial concems. While sampling was used in such a way as to replicate DJ techniques in a new medium that differed kinesthetically from vinyl, it was shown how the connoisseurist values shaped the stylistics ofsampling and its interpretive conventions. 1 suggest that the new kind of"creative freedom" afforded to DJs in the record industry based on the exchange value oftheir star status in clubculture was in tum articulated as a constraint. The divergence ofremixes by name DJs from any kind of perceptible relation to the original material does not merely reflect their relative autonomy in this new arrangement ofmarketing through DJ branding, but rather, it became a gesture ofboth the separatism ofunderground DJ culture and ofthe DJ as an autonomous creator. The shift in the stylistics ofremixing was in this sense productive of DJ authorship not simply reflections ofit. The idea ofreflection is problematized by the signification ofcreative autonomy which bears little relation to the actual forms of authorship according to which they were remunerated. The historical shift in remix methodologies and stylistics again suggests that the creative freedom ofDJs was becoming discursively opposed to the seriaI products and pleasures ofrecurrence and repetition that underground DJs associated with the popular music industry and its audiences. 1 suggest that even as DJ godstars presented themselves as beyond-genre, beyond remix formula and its associated seriality and derivative status, the underside oftheir model ofdissimilitude or "total production" was, like self-sampling, a copy model ofself-expression and Romantic authorship. Despite its obsolescence, it is worth considering what this recasting ofcreative sovereignty suggests, not only about the hubris ofunderground DJ culture, but about the social relationships (or divisions) imagined through this self-identical remixing. As John Durham Peters (1999) writes, 49 The hope ofredoubling the selfalways misses the autonomy ofthe other. Authenticity can be a profoundly selfish ideal. .. one must often sacrifice the drearn offidelity in representing one's own feelings and thoughts in order to evoke the truest image ofthem for the other... The problem ofcommunication is not language's slipperiness, it is the unfixable difference between the selfand the other. The challenge ofcommunication is not to be true to our own interiority but to have mercy on others for never seeing o"urselves as we do (267). The emergence ofwhat Reynolds calls the contemptuous remix poses a problem for the analysis ofthe practices ofcopying, for here it is the unique sound ofthe DJ-as-originator that is copied, not the already-recorded. Iffor Hebdige (1987) the successive versioning ofrecords in DJ culture was a form ofquotation and dialogue, what kinds ofsocial forms does the se1f-referentialor self-copying ofcontemporary DJ culture communicate? Historical Foreground: From Modest to Contemptuous Remixes Hebdige's (1987) term for DJ practice in Caribbean culture evokes a kind ofcollaborative production. From the slight and successive contributions and edits implied by versioning, to the extended disco remix and its rigid formalism (but no less centred around a principle ofvariability) it becomes difficult to perceive any connection at all with the contemporary remix of"name DJs". Nevertheless, the drastic shift to contempt for the source material does tell us something about the self-perception ofDJs recent years as well as the relative autonomy afforded by the value oftheir underground status to record companies. Kai Fikentscher (1995) argues that the "musical theory" developed in DJ culture coincides with the transformation ofthe commodity form from song to track. He distinguishes different modes ofproducing dance music that resonate with the typologies ofHebdige (1987) and Sanjek (1994) discussed in Chapter Two where re-recordings are distinguished by different proportions ofcopied and original content. Fikentscher describes shifts in the history ofdance music production and style rather than parallel forms. In this project, l am tracing out both the historical changes within DJ practices as well as the coding and stratification ofdifferent techniques over time. However, we need to be careful with the way we interpret agency in the description ofhistorical shifts and in the equivalence ofparallel practices, since DJ culture presents its own history as one of continuous and conscious stylistic development in an isolated and self-sufficient "underground". In fact, the "evolution" towards this High DJ culture is much more messy than such narratives describe: it is a history ofrandom events intersecting with the 50 routine modes ofcultural reproduction which are in tum presented as innovations and progressions. Beginning with late 1970s disco and ending with early 1990s house, the stages in Fikentscher's briefhistory ofDJ culture suggest that the increased use ofprogrammable machines in dance music production coincides with the diminution oftraditional song structure, the increased number ofversions or variations on 12-inch singles, the increasing length ofdance mixes, and the sparseness ofinstrumentation. Fikentscher suggests that the recontextualization ofrecords into a performative mode ofmixing for a live audience was then transferred "from the DJ booth to the recording studio" (90), and that this tum towards the production ofsound objects by DJs coincides with changes in the form and format ofdance music commodities. Simi1arly, Thomton (1995) writes, "Sorne [DJs] began recording their mixes, editing them on reel-to-ree! tapes, then playing them in clubs. When these recordings were transferred to vinyl, the extended remix was bom" (59). The movement in which the Dl's role moved from tumtable operator to modem creative subject producing discrete and technically reproducible sound objects cannot be easily pin-pointed since "production" had been going on for sorne time in unauthorized practices ofre-recording. However, for the results to be properly creative in the proprietary sense, something beyond the sum ofthe source materials had to be identified as the "work". Straw (1995) argues that it is not just technique that is transferred between deejaying and recording, but also the hierarchy ofskills, secrecy, and the knowledge. As we have seen, DJ expertise has been located in both the intellectuallabor ofselection and the intuitive sense ofsequencing, placement and disguising. However, remix contracts obviously pre-determined the selection to be re-mixed. These commissioned or authorised re-recordings became increasingly problematic. The discursive edifice ofthe Art of deejaying was founded on the equation ofvast record collections with musical vocabulary and distance from the organized relations ofthe music industry as guaranteeing "artistic" or "creative" selection and placement. As we will see, the hallmark ofDJ culture, the remixed record, wouId become a platform for the articulation ofHigh DJ culture as ideologically distinct from lesser forms ofseriaI remixing and the DJ as a creative subject who invented rather than followed genre and formula.- Sonic Infidelitv: Originality-Through-Dissimilitude The radical gestures ofopposition through anonymity and pseudonymity, which stage the severing ofthe ties with the pop-star system, are premised on a separation ofaesthetics 51 from the commercial, industrial and legal concerns of authorship. This can be seen in the paranoid reclusiveness ofcertain techno Dl-auteurs such as the Detroit-based Underground Resistance, who refuse to be photographed or give interviews (which interestingly seems to increase their allure and marketability). Distance from the marketing apparatus ofthe record industry in most cultures that perceive themselves as underground is understood as a necessary condition for innovation to flourish, and for formula to be resisted. The simple math ofunderground music cultures which equates self-sustaining micro economies with unrestrained self-expression, uniqueness ofmusical works, authenticity ofmusical experience, etc., leads towards a preference for the unauthorised remix to the commissioned remix. But this set ofequations was troubled by a interesting anomaly: the commissioned remix had been anonymous in its generic phase but it was underground Dl culture that produced a number of"name DIs" whose unique sounds corresponded to different subgenres ofdance music. For a self-defined underground culture that navigated musicallandscapes by genre rather than by personality, the rise ofthe Dl star signified market expansion beyond the confines ofthe connoisseur contingency that sustained what Hesmondhalgh describes as an ideological lack of interest in authorship. This kind ofthinking about the musical "work" as a way ofmaking a sound or genre happen in a unique way is not entirely opposed to individual authorship. Although it is centred primarily upon information about existing records, deejaying, sampling, and remixing have not been accompanied by the de-mystification of artistic practice that we might expect. As Straw (1995) has pointed out, For the figure ofthe dance club Dl to be invested with enigmatic authority, an easily cultivated, spatialized knowledge (a sense ofthe present musical field) must appear secondary to another, more elusive skill (the ability to follow one song wi.th another which seems its inevitable successor) (251). Sampling and remixing also [old around appropriation in ways that make it about careful selection and placement rather than randornness. As Eddie F (producer, Mary l. Blige, among others) has put it, 52 A lot ofpeople think you just get a record, throw it on, sit around and pick a piece ofit to use. But there's definitely a meaningful approach to it, a sensibility. That's where the art cornes in: trying to find things that blend well together. And that involves a vast knowledge ofa lot ofdifferent music, sounds and cultures. Ifyou don't really fine-tune what you're doing and are just trying to throw something together, it won't sound good (Mitchell, 2000). A lot ofpeople think you just get a record, throw it on, sit around and pick a piece ofit to use. But there's definitely a meaningful approach to it, a sensibility. That's where the art cornes in: trying to find things that blend well together. And that involves a vast knowledge ofa lot of different music, sounds and cultures. Ifyou don't really fine-tune what you're doing and are just trying to throw something together, it won't sound good (Billboard, 12/09/00). There is a subtle but important implication of locating the Art ofdeej aying at this particular point. This way ofthinking about mixing and remixing conceives ofmusical cultures as signifying elements that can be recombined as ifthey were formed a unified vocabulary. Tt is a conceptual structure that leads me to question whether Dl culture is really a culture ofthe copy at all, or ifRigh Dl culture is distinguished by the way its remix practices are conceived in terms oforiginal composition. As Welchman (2001) writes, The terms in this debate [between originality and mimesis], and the positions adumbrated with reference to them, are complex and historically specifie. But while every age has reinvented the originality-imitation debate in its own image, modernism was largely predicated on the triumph ofcompositional 'originality'. Postmodernism appropriated and recast the discussion, installing something close to a culture ofthe copy in its shifting definitional core (4). But what ifthe triumph ofcompositional originality could be staged by the editing ofthe perception ofthe original through the movement towards the mixing ofshards so tiny (in both the sense oftheir near-imperceptibility and in relation to a broad spectrum ofsounds made available through commodification) that they no longer contain any ability to signify outside oftheir new compositional context? Could the mixer ofthese shards then come to resemble a composer ofthe most traditional, or rather, modernist, sort?23 Rouse Dl/producer Sasha claims ofremixing: / H's a bit like modern art. It's kind oflike an artist who uses bits ofscrap metal, bits ofpreexisting things, to create something new and exciting. Our work is like that, 23 Indeed, Straw's analysis of discourses surrounding sampling and deejaying in dance music culture make that culture "one of the last modernist art worlds. A whole array ofother modernist motifs continue their half-life within dance music, long after they have withered elsewhere" (1995: 254). 53 picking up beats and deconstructing them or recycling them into a different art (Werner, 1998). When samples are "layered", "melded" of"recycled" in re-recording, DJs understand this assembly to be an original, and in discourse they "justify their digital music production in terms ofestablished notions ofauthorship and musical creativity" (Zuberi, 2001: 178). These notions ofauthorship are redirected towards the unique sound assemblage from sounds that are conceived as materials like wood or metal, and not as properly cultural materials until they are treated by the remix-composer. While the interpretation ofDJ culture's practices ofcopying in terms ofa culture afthe copy where "there is no such thing as an original mix" (Ingham, 1999:124), originality is also said to be displayed in the mix, the juxtaposition, the assemblage ofthe already-recorded (Krasnow, 1995; Reynolds, 1998b). As l have shown in Chapter Two, the depolarisation ofcopying and originality can be set in motion not only through the minimal variation ofexisting recordings, but through the displacement of creative agency into the selection and manipulation of"found" sound "materials". The defacement ofthe copy prevents the recognition ofthe original as a model at different levels ofDJ culture. As Alexei Monroe (1999) suggests, stylistic change is presented in terms ofcontinuous development rather than the recasting (after a period of inactivity or absence) ofan oIder style. At both this level of genre and at the level of authorship, l suggest that DJ culture was moving towards a presentation ofitselfnot as culture ofthe copy, but as a culture with neither predecessor nor twin. The Rise of"Total Production" and A Lament for the Modest Remix A key shift in appropriation aesthetics is marked by Hebdige's Subculture (1979) and Cut 'n' Mix (1987). In the his 1979 work on the signifying practices ofBritish youth, Hebdige interpreted appropriation in terms ofthe radical aesthetics ofcollage/montage. The appropriation or recontextualisation ofthe signifying element was presumed to subvert its natural or conventional meaning. This was appropriation conceived as theft, and Hebdige borrowed Umberto Eco's phrase "semiotic guerrilla warfare" to present appropriation aesthetics as deviations, oppositions, resistance to the "parent" or "mainstream" culture from which they were stealing e!ements. Repetition was understood as divergence, not as continuity. In his later work on Caribbean music, Hebdige (1987) tempered the militancy of his early formulation ofappropriation and argued that the intention behind appropriation was not theft or opposition, but a wide range ofsignifying gestures such as competition, homage, tracing roots, etc. Significantly, this collaborative and seriaI practice of 54 versioning records has been institutionalized in the European and North American music industries in the use ofthe remixing as a way ofintemalizing a fragmented audience. Reynolds (1998b) notes that in the last twenty years, the practice and aesthetic rules ofremixing in this context have changed. Beginning as a "task ofadjusting a song to dance floor requirements", the remix in the 1990s then "evolved way beyond its early modest premises" (277). Reynolds' account ofthis "evolution" is instructive because in his overt lament for the 10ss ofthe modest remix, one gets a sense ofhow the pleasure enabled by repetition fades with the reversion to anti-appropriationist notions of authorship in remixing: These remixes, performed by DJs and producers renowned in particu1ar scenes, have become increasingly remote from the original in terms oftempo, rhythm, and instrumentation, and structure so that only the key riffs or vocal hooks ofthe original track might be retained. Gradually, remixing became a creative activity in itself; the original track became the pretext and springboard for the remixer to compose an almost entire1y new piece ofmusic that might contain only tiny shards and ghostly traces ofits source. Today, it's the norm for remixers to operate with an almost contemptuous disregard for the material they are given; in tum, their clients give the remixers license to deface and dismember (277). Reynolds links this tendency to the remix's role in the "business strategy of maximum market penetration", where the commodity form ofthe 12-inch single gradually increased the number ofmixes, and thus the degree ofleeway afforded to each remixer. This tendency away from the modest remix can be traced through a two trajectories. First, as Hebdige documents in Cut ln' Mix, versioning was primarily aDJ mix (using actual tumtables and a mixing desk) committed to tape and then to vinyl. The technological assemblage lent itselfto variations or versioning, where the remixer was working with copies ofwhole songs. The term "versioning" indicates the slight and successive modifications ofthe original. When samplers were introduced into tbis process, memory limitations ofthese early machines limited the size ofthe bits that could be appropriated to a few seconds. Second, the urge away from the "artist's name as a brand" evidenced by pseudonymity in remix promotion, noted by Hesmondhalgh, was overshadowed by what Reynolds (1998b) calls the "DJ godstar phenomenon" wherein the relative lack of interest in authorship at the level ofrecording enabled DJ culture to produce its own set of va1uable brand name mix tapes, compilation CDs, and remixes. While record labels hired DJs for their knowledge oftrends in micro-music scenes, they were also appropriating the names ofthe high-profile DJs to market 12-inch "singles" (but not-so-single when the remixes are a1most entirely new songs). 55 As l discussed above, legal and commercial concems have converged to shape the notion oforiginality and authorship that guides the practice of appropriation. While DJs are certainly encouraged to copy as much ofthe original as they want, the aesthetic of sampling in hip hop and dance music culture has been directed towards keeping samples concealed or at least unrecognisable. Steve "Silk" Hurley, who has remixed for Michael Jackson and many other pop acts claims that the lo.ngevity, ofa remix career is contingent upon a knowledge ofthe business and law: "In phase two ofmy career the longevity has been because l leamed the business. Early on in my career l went through lawsuits and things like that which taught me lessons l will never forget" (Music Week, February 14, 1998). However, the gap between the versioning ofrecords in Jamaican dub, characterised by slight and successive changes to records, and the "contemptuous disregard for the original material" in North American and European remixing draws attention to a lingering notion ofappropriation-as-subversion. Or, more precise1y, the appropriation-as-originality element ofsoundclashes in Jamaican remixing has been accentuated. The dissimilarity between original and copy in dance music culture is an articulation ofdistance rather than servitude to the model provided by the pop star's record company. While there are clearly many cases where DJs claim to accept remix projects only for those artists they admire, they are increasingly using the original as a benchrnark for gauging the distance between conformity and originality. This is because as big record labels hire DJs to lend their name to such bands as D2, the credibility which makes the Dl a sought-after remixer needs to be maintained by continually establishing distance from the "mainstream". The distance is signified at the level ofsound by dissimilitude, that is, using sparse amounts ofthe original and heavy amounts from sources which are concealed. Dl King Britt, who did a better-known remix ofa well-known song by Brandy, puts the matter in perspective: Artists send you an a cappella [tape], and you create your own music and style around it. That's total production . .. notjust an edit. That's why we have a remix category at the Grammy Awards, because the bigwigs know that [remixing] isn't just editing. This is production. And most Dls have a certain sound, and different labels want that sound for their remixes (Smith, 1998). "Maximum market penetration" is not compatible with modest remixing because it is precisely the separatism ofthe "underground" which is being intemalised with this notion ofthe audience (Thomton, 1995). As ffIT/London Records A&R executive Neil Harris puts it, "We want artists that people copy, not ones who follow trends. Ones with a distinct sound and a desire to make numerous records" (Bell, 1998). Remixing becomes a format for demonstrating this "distinct sound", not minor inflections upon a popular 56 song which is perceived ta be tao generic and tao easy. The equation ofrepetition with confonnity can be traced not only through Western philosophy and academic approaches to music, but in the discourse ofsampling and remixing. Just as Hebdige (1979) interpreted punks as "stealing" or plundering the wardrobes ofteddy boys, among others, so e1ectronic appropriation turns towards other music scenes genres. As Reynolds puts it, "This adversarial attitude on the part of remixer to remixee is encapsulated in one ofthe nineties dance scene's biggest buzzwords: 'versus'," (1998b: 277). Indeed, a whole slew ofcommissioned "vs." treatments ofother people's work came to produce mixes that increasingly had very little in common sonically. This is exemplified, for Reynolds, by "experimental electronic" producer u-Ziq's commissioned remix ofLuke Haines from the aptly-named group the Auteurs. According to Reynolds, u-Ziq "wasn't shy about revealing his contempt for the material he had to rework: the result was merciless mutilation ofHaine's finely honed songs" (Ibid.). While Reynolds (as well as Krasnow) talk ofthe end ofthe "finished product", it seems that the music industry has had sorne success in cordoning the commercial viability ofthis fraying to certain moments and sites. Moreover, to talk ofthe end ofthe finished product obscures sorne key implications ofthe replication ofmodernist notions of authorship in appropriation practices which Reynolds discusses in his essay. Contemptuous remixing may evidence that "the song is treated as a set ofresources that can be endlessly adapted and rearranged", but this urge away from the original is directed towards producing another kind oforiginal. Reynolds associates the contemptuous remix with market strategies and the inflated egos ofDJ auteurs, but this obscures the rather interesting suggestion by Hebdige (1987) that versioning generates new musical "dialogues" between diverse musicians who often never meet in person. Although remixing is usually commissioned in advance, it can be understood as a fonn ofseriaI, but nonetheless collaborative, musical production. Nevertheless, it is questionable as to whether such dialogues are really happening, and if so, with whom, since remixes are carried without much regard for the material they recelve. Despite the DJ god-star phenomenon, in their role as remixers they are paid flat rates for their contributions to the commercial effects ofa sound recording. The implications ofthis pattern ofremunerating the creative labour ofcopying and processing have not yet been explored. On the one hand, it suggests that the discourse ofauthorship, originality and virtuosity in sound collage conceals the way legal and commercial institutions are beginning to recognize what Lury (1993) calls "the ordinariness of creative labour", a recognition which "demystifies the myths and metaphors ofartistic expression" (53). Further evidence ofthis disassembly ofthe author-as-originator from copyright law can be found in the way sound engineers are periodically included in a list 57 of"authors" ofa sound recording. On the other hand, the distinction between creative and other kinds oflabor is made "by other, perhaps more indirect means" (Ibid.), such as remunerating sorne kinds oflabor such as remixing on a wage basis and others kinds of activities like writing lyrics or "producing" on a rights basis. One way ofunderstanding the contempt communicated in defacement or disregard in remixing is precisely this tendency for the DJ-as-author to be differentiated from "proper" musicality by these indirect means ofremuneration. For OJs, remix projects are crucial sources offunding, but there is a gap between the virtuosity they acquire in clubculture and their systematic exclusion from the upper ranks ofauthorship in those remix projects. In that sense, the contemptuous remix is representative ofa split in the culture industries more generally, between the "technical crew" and the "creative team". However, 1am hesitant to pursue this interpretation any further. 1would also include in these indirect means ofdifferentiating the contributions ofcreative labor DJ discourses about their practice which have re-mystified self-expression through an emphasis on "total production" and intuitive skills over the acquisition of information shrouded in secrecy. Although 1have focused on how anti-appropriationist discourses in remixing and sampling have covered-over repetition, the ongoing differentiation oflabor by indirect means is indicative ofa perceived disruptive potential in remixing. An executive at the record label that produced Sarah McLachlan's single and commissioned and directed the remixïng recasts the boundary between "bastardization" and "original work," and between remixers and musicians: Sarah's very comfortable with doing these mixes because they're on her terms. There's no bells and whistles and no chipmunks - that just won't happen, because then you'd just be breaking a mixer (Sexton, 2001) Remixing, like bootlegging, opens up a moment ofinstability where it is possible for the work to become displaced and defaced in such a way as to highlight the labour, knowledge and skill ofthe copyist rather than the artist or producer that commissioned the de-sign. The danger is that the glare ofthe 'mixers' persona could thereby come to the fore, while the musician who commissioned the remix becornes only another contributor to the sound, even ifthis shift is not reflected in the differential remuneration ofcontributors. Keith Aoki (1996) has shown how a strong connection between "property" and "sovereignty" continues to be made in intellectual property law despite their "unbundling" (1297). One instance ofthis unbundling can be observed in remixing, where intellectual property is decomposed and remade by people who are neither the "owner" nor the "origin" ofthe work. At the same time, however, this connection between property and sovereignty is not limited to legal contexts, but has been 58 rearticulated in musicians' discourse surrounding the practices ofsound appropriation. At precisely the moment when the author-as-originator is fading in copyright law, and when creative labor is being remunerated on a wage basis in remixing, the notion of"total production" gains a foothold in the discourse ofremixing. It is perhaps in the interests of sovereignty that remixers strive for sonic dissimilarity from the property which they have been offered to "deface and dismember". In any case the rejection ofappropriative practices and the copy status ofthe remix is displacing an aesthetic ofseriality to other less credible spheres ofactivity which 1will explore in Chapters Five and Six. The Aestheticization ofSeparatism and the Non-Isolation ofDJ Practice In this chapter 1traced out the relationship between the methodology and style of remixing and the changing status ofDJ labor. There is a parallel tendency in remix practices towards the signification DJ labor and the differentiation ofits knowleges and practices as a form of expertise. This analysis differed from the previous one in the important respect that it examined not so much the way in which copying was covered over in sampling but how sampling was expunged from remix practices. 1examined how ways ofdeejaying were coded and stratified according to the degree ofcreativity and self expression which they are perceived to facilitate. This chapter also differed from the previous one in my argument that the separatism ofunderground DJ culture as well as the graduaI individuation ofDJ personalities ensured the dissolution ofcollaborative forms of authorship in the realm ofcommissioned remixes ofpopular songs. 1showed how the authorial concems ofDJs were articulated by means ofrejecting the status ofthe remix as a copy or a derivative of a mode! "work". The remix was repositioned as an original "work" through the deployment ofa model ofdissimilitude. The tension identified in this chapter is, in short, between the separatism ofthe underground, which depended upon generic conventions/expectations as guidelines for both sampling practice and the consumption ofsample-based dance music, and the sovereignty ofthe individuated DJ-auteurs staged through the rejection ofgenre as a commercial constraint imposed by music joumalism and the music industry. By examining the implications ofunderground credibility, we can begin to understand the importance ofdissimilitude in the seriaI products ofthe music industry for articulating cultural separateness and supedority at this moment when DJs' relationship with the industry and the popular culture they denigrated at the semantic level was becoming an increasingly beneficial one. Remixing was coded as "more creative" in relation to the practices copying in sampling and replaying in tumtable deejaying. Yet the gap between the Dl's presence on the credit list and his/her exclusion from the rights of authors 59 frustrates DJ culture's self-perception as an artistic vanguard, and as a culture of originals, prototypes and innovations rather than derivative versions ofwhat was perceived as an already banal mode!. The signification oforiginality and separateness through dissimilitude at the semantic level was, however, afforded by the signification of sorne kind ofconnection between originals and remixes in the form ofthe musical commodity. Changes in remix style and methodology not only mark or reflect DJs' concem with being credited by underground audiences with the production the retroactive "original", but rather they were key discursive strategies in the staging ofthe isolation of the Dl-auteur from commercial interests even as their underground credibility was becoming a financial asset in the organized music industry. 60 CHAPTER FOUR: Conspicuous Copving as Critique The guerrilla warfare analogy seems to be one ofthe most appealing ways ofdescribing electronic copying, and it follows in a tradition ofLeftward reverse appropriations. Yet, as 1 argued in Chapter One, the copying-as-appropriation and appropriation-as-theft discourse are bound up with a particular idea ofwhat copying should do: it should somehow spur social transformation and critique the system ofrights in which it is always implicated; disturb our meaning-making habitudes; and frustrate our expectations rather than provide ontological security and pleasure through repetition. Musical projects such as the Plunderphonics (Canada), Negativland (U.S.), and The KLF (Kopyright Liberation Front) (U.K.) frame their practice oftaking-without-asking in terms of"thoughtful plagiarims", as Schwartz (1996) has put it, that is, takings that are designed to provoke controversy and draw attention to the boundaries ofintellectual property in the realm of reproduced sound. 1will begin this chapter with a description ofthe performance of appropriation as subversive theft and then examine sorne ofthe problems encountered by this self-presentation ofthe copyists as Leftward resistance. 1 suggest that one ofthe difficulties with copying as a form ofcritique is that the pleasure ofrepetition or aesthetic ofseriality which these almost-exact copies generate is more dear to their audiences than the critique through which the copyists justify their takings. 1will then make my own interpretive intervention by showing how the perception ofcopying as creative in Dl culture (among other sites) eclipses the perception ofcopying as critique during the 1990s. 1then propose another way that these projects might be seen as disruptive by displacing the vague notion ofthe System as the object to be disrupted with the more historically specific Art ofdeejaying described in the last two chapters. This reconsideration or rearticulation ofthe object ofdisruption begins in this chapter, but continues through to the conclusion ofthis thesis. The present chapter suggests that The KLF's conspicuous copying sensation problematizes the way in which Dl culture's historical divergence from precisely that practice is understood in terms ofa progression towards "more creative" methodologies. In fact, as we will see, sarnpling and remixing techniques produced not just one trajectory ofcreative "development" but rather CQ implicated aesthetics and methodologies. The ideological contractions ofThe KLF and their failure to topple regimes ofcopying should not detract from an consideration oftheir audience's appreciation for the conspicuous copy. 61 Rearticulating the Disruptive Potential of Conspicuous Copying In the literature on copying reviewed in this thesis, copying is often arrned as critique by articulating it as appropriation. In their full name, The Kopyright Liberation Front contextualize themselves in a tradition ofLeftward critiques ofappropriation-by cornrnodification. Schwartz (1996) provides a compressed history ofvarious critiques through-copying projects, citing the Situationist International, the Institute for Comparative Vandalism, among others. Schwartz's surnrnary oftheir motives underlines the way in which plagiarism has been politicized, that is, the way it is valorized in terms ofsubverting the relations oftaking: Leftward, the 1988 Festivals ofPlagiarism in Glasgow, London, San Francisco, and Berlin exalted plagiarism as a defiance ofcapitalism, whose cornrnodification ofthe werld and ofart proceeds upon the pretense oforiginality and uniqueness... AlI, however, would reject "kleptomania" as an imperialist syndrome, the needless taking ofwhat belongs to others; plagiarism must be a thoughtful assault upon privilege, retaking that which should belong to everyone (314). As l have already argued, appropriation in the realm ofreproduced sound has been coded in a number ofways that do not fit so easily within the binary opposition of conformity/resistance put forth by Hebdige (1979) and Frith (1986). This is in part because, as Schwartz (1996) and Welchman (2001) have pointed out, appropriation and the creative process, originality and copying, are no longer defined in opposition to one another in popular culture, in the art gallery world, and in art criticism. Such a depolarization thus poses a major obstacle for the conflictual model ofappropriation and for the reception of appropriationist works as critical resistance. Just as the Art ofdeejaying makes copying a creative act, appropriation is a way ofmaking copying a politically subversive act. In Sam Binkley's (2000) terms, these interpretations seem to be cornrnitted to the redemption ofthe repetitious strategies ofthe popular by extending to them the aesthetic values ofhigh art: experiment, innovation and progress. However, a subtle but significant characteristic ofthese guerrilla samp1ers more generally is their sense ofhumor; their militancy is signified in such an explicit way so as to work as a self-parody at the very least, which in turn compels a reconsideration ofthe extent to which they actually expect their re-takes to operate as tactics ofsubversion. By contrast, High Dl culture's insular seriousness becomes more clear. 62 The emergence and displacement ofthe guerrilla warfare aesthetic can be usefully explored in terms ofthe rapid enculturation ofsamplers into the production and exchange ofsonic property. The historical moment in which this aesthetic emerged in the 1980s is also usefui for showing how the aesthetic was troubled by the notions oforiginality and uniqueness that were being extended to sampling in DJ culture. Indeed, as remixers were named Rock Critic ofthe Year in the 1980s as remixes 24 ofsongs were making increasing appearances in the pop charts , the enculturation of samplers seems to outpace the disruptive effects ofsampling. l suggest that legal constraints and the value ofinnovation are as important to the aesthetic ofguerrilla warfare as they are to the covert sampling aesthetic. The aesthetic ofguerril1a warfare, however, does not correspond to disruptive effects and these effects have to be communicated, staged and reinvented though extra-musical (or perhaps para-musical) means. largue that the success ofThe KLF's conspicuous copies in the 1990s evidences a residual desire among pop music audiences for transparent rather than covert sampling, and for the remix to resemble what it copies. The Author's Image and the Authentication ofDJ Works by Eye As l have shown in Chapters Two and Three, the discursive community ofprofessional DJs and their audiences have developed an interpretive framework for judging the quality ofsample-based works through the expertise ofthe individual who selects, distorts and restructures. There is a certain degree oftrust established between the agents in cultural reproduction, and this trust is crucial to the credibility ofDJs and the kinds ofclaims they can make conceming the origins ofunique sound. In the early 1990s, DJ Chris Sheppard (a.k.a. Dog Whistle) emerged as one ofToronto's first underground DJ stars to cross over into the popular dance music industry. Exploiting the value ofhis name, he kept a busy schedule on weekends, playing on radio shows in the early evening and then doing sets at clubs and raves. Given the sort ofomnipresence that radio helped him to develop, as wel1 as the underground scenesters' suspicion ofaIl mainstream success, it is not surprising that rumors began to circulate that Sheppard was not always at the clubs "in body" but rather, or so the story went, he sent pre-recorded mixes to the clubs in exchange for a fee. Although there are other factors in the loss ofSheppard's credibility, such rumors of trickery demonstrate the importance oftrust and ethical codes in this culture ofthe replay and copy. 24"The degree to which these individuals deconstruct the original texts they mix can be so extreme that Arthur Baker was once named 'Rock Critic ofthe Year'." (Sanjek: 351) 63 Even with the sedimentatlOn ofthese conventions in DJ culture, the instability of the operations that bind DJ labor to the "works" are evident on the fringes ofthat culture. The deployment ofnotions oforiginality in practices ofcopying has given rise to sorne glaring contradictions. The most interesting solution to the contradiction (ofsampling and then expecting not to be sampled) that 1have so far mentioned are Goldie's self copying methodology, that is, sampling sounds he produces "live" in the studio; and, secondly, Richard James' displacement ofcopy protection from the "works" to his methodology via a secrecy that is rigidly enforced around information about source material and technological assemblage. DJ authorship sits on the line between craft and craftiness, between labor-intensive sound processing and "time-saving techniques" (as DJ Magazine caUs them). As with aU claims to individual authorship, there is a bit of trickery involved in the maintenance over time ofthe DJ as the single point oforigin of the unique sound. English superstar DJ Carl Cox told DJMagazine in 1992, at home l'U use the 1975 Numark [mixing console] which has got a sampler and loops [a device for repeating a sample continuously]. l've actually put a record out just by using two decks and a Numark mixer and everybody thought l created it in a studio. So it can be done. My next big step is to start introducing sampling into my live sets. Obviously they'U be pre-recorded samples but 1'11 actually start creating sorne live remixes. It just gives you that little bit more creativity rather than just having two tumtables and a mixer you can start introducingyour own music live (Curling, 4). The subtle shift in Cox's pre-recorded sampies to "his" music is suggestive ofthe way quotation marks are systematically erased in DJ methodology. Furthermore, deejay stardom (ofwhich Cox was one ofrave culture's first) is produced through the mystification ofself-expression like many other kinds ofmusical performance. In high school, people who had very little interest in dance music but who were curious about the raves 1was going to sometimes decided to come along and see it for themselves. As it turned out, it was precisely what they could not see that distracted them: Frequently, at sorne point in the night, they would motion to the DJ booth and ask, "What is he doing up there?" The whole point ofgoing to a live event in rock culture was to see studio musicians out oftheir element, to see ifthey stand the test oflive performance. In clubculture, the DJ is hidden high above the crowd in what is called the DJ booth. However, it is not just the naive listener who is taken in by the craftiness behind the Dl's unique sound, which suggests that rave and club goers and connoisseurs are not unlike 64 popular music audiences more generally who, as Andrew Goodwin (1988) puts it, "need to see their pop musicians doing something" (45). This in tum helps us to understand why connoisseurs will crowd around the DJ booth (called "trainspotters" in DJ-speak.) trying to peer in at the DJ's records but also for signs ofsorne kind ofembodied authenticity. Carl Cox hints at the way listeners frequently and perhaps unconsciously attribute what we are hearing to something the DJ is doing in the booth, not something that has happened in the moment ofrecording. The operations that bind DJ work to the musical experience on records or in club nights have been sedimented over the course ofthe last thirty years into the conventions ofDJ culture. As we have already established, these operations have to be partially concealed in order to mystify the process ofreplaying and copying, which is why the DJs have in the past resorted to a permanent marker to prevent trainspotters from seeing the information imprinted on the spinning records. The meaning of a recognizable sample depends on the interpretive framework of the listener. What distinguishes the "smart" and "naïve" listener is access to information about who produced the work and according to what end. For one listener, a sample may be interpreted as subversively stolen and communicating opposition between copy and copied. For this listener, the importance ofthe sample might be its innovative assemblage with other beats or sounds and the fact that it was taken without paying licensing fees (information that could only be obtained from elsewhere). For another listener, the sample can be perceived as a seriaI product with no opposition or tension with other instances ofthe sound. It might be the formaI principle ofvariability itselfwhich is valued at various textuallevels and time frames ofthe sound's repetition. Ifappropriation is to be perceived as disruptive ofthe System for at least this first type of"smart" listener, then its disruptive effects must be reinvented and communicated. In the UK., for example, the admittance ofDJs into the Musicians' Union in the U.K. poses a serious problem for the disruptive effects of"appropriating" records, records which have for sorne time been designed for this kind ofappropriation as smal1 dance music and hip hop record labels value promotion or needle time over col1ecting royalties (Frith, 1987). Thus, the perception of appropriation as subversive depends, at least in part, on the identification ofthe.System with a specifie form ofpropriety and the use of the sonic property against the conventions which regulate its exchange. l will now tum to the The Kopyright Liberation Front and their guerrilla warfare aesthetic with an attentiveness to the specific system ofpropriety and originality that they seem to he troubling with their provisions ofample proofofpiracy, embodied acts for the audience 65 to see, and the pleasure ofhearing the slight variation ofsomething popular music audiences had already heard. Kopy Rites and Rituals: Authenticity in Covert and Conspicuous Copying. In 1987, as British DJ culture was cultivating a techno-shamanic rituallater known as rave, a mysterious duo calling themselves The KLF released an LP entitled "1987, What the Fuck Is Going On" in which they used lengthy and recognizable samples ofwell known pop songs such as the Beatles "AlI You Need Is Love" and Abba's "Dancing Queen". When Abba threatened to sue, the LP was hastily pulIed from distribution. This was precisely the sort ofpublicity that The KLF required in order for their appropriations to be perceived as disruptive. Soon after, The KLF were coordinating their own photography shoots, posing in front ofbilIboards that they covered in absurdist collages. After changing their name to The Timelords, they released their 1988 single "Doctorin' the Tardis," which announced both the source oftheir material- the theme song ofthe British television series Doctor Who - and the approach to that material, which was to doctor or forge the material, or more precisely, splice it with Gary Glitters's "Rock and Roll". According to Rose, "This time, the sampling bandits won. Though deluged with threats from BBC lawyers, The Timelords performed their national hit on BBC-TV's Top ofthe Pops. Worldwide, the record sold over a million copies" (24). "Doctorin' the Tardis" can be heard during NHL hockey games during which fans chant along to the me1ody. The popularity and profitability ofthis act ofcopying, as weIl as the displacement ofthe appropriationist work itselfinto contexts wherelisteners were unlike1y to perceive the familiar tune as stolen, posed a problem for the ideological coherence ofthe aesthetic ofguerrilla warfare. The contradiction ofa subversive but lucrative project could only be resolved through increasingly extreme measures, buming a million pounds worth ofcash on a small island offthe coast ofScotland and firing a machine gun (presumably filled with blanks) after receiving a Brit Award, and then announcing that "The KLF have left the music industry". Indeed, although no one seemed to flinch when The KLF fired the gun, sorne Brit-Grammy winners were c1early disgusted as they left the building. The KLF's conspicuous copying was carried out pseudonymously although their self-presentation in photographs was anonymous. Pseudonyms leave a trail of information behind shifting personas, and The KLF even foregrounded part ofthese connections in the title oftheir full-Iength album, "The History ofthe Jams a.k.a. The Time1ords". Many writers have noted the importance ofanonymity for distancing dance 66 music from what Cynthia Rose (1991) calls the pop monoliths (Straw, 1995; Zuberi, 2001; Thornton, 1995; Hesmondhalgh, 1998). Hesmondhalgh in particular has noted that anonymous authorship is an indication ofthe low-promotion costs ofdance music culture enabled by the free advertising ofmoral panic in the news media. The value ofanonymity is also heightened in dance music culture where, as Straw has noted, credibility has been founded on secrecy. Anonymity is central to dance music's perception ofitselfas economically independent from the record industry, and yet hardly any records are actually produced anonymously: even the highly-prized white label I2-inches are usually marked with a title and a pseudonym. The connoisseur culture in which these "anonymous" "anti-commodities" are circulated ensure that connections are made between names, which proves to be useful calling card when record labels find (by means ofDJs who collect this information and run the small records labels) and sign the person behind the pseudonym. Pseudonyms afford the best ofboth worlds, a fixed identity to attribute skill and imagination, and a series ofshifting personae to deflect the suspicion that the copyist is after all interested in being credited and compensated. In the case ofThe KLF, the antagonizing selection ofsamples from television shows and from pop music acts generated a panic concerning threats to intellectual property, and this panic acted quite effectivelyas free advertising. It would be interesting to compare the promotion costs of "Doctorin' the Tardis" with those ofother songs in the same pop charts. The KLF's anonymity is a part oftheir aesthetic, appearing in photographs with black ski-masks, releasing records under a variety ofpseudonyms but having their individual names printed in the credit list. 1know through music magazines that The KLF are Jim Cauty and Bill Drummond and so did Stuttgart-based Intercord records with whom the Cauty and Drummond negotiated a direct deal for distribution in Germany, Switzerland and Austrailia. An analysis ofthe aesthetic ofpiracy or bootlegging should not exclude the stylized "cancellation" and "versioning" ofpersonas since it is not only a solution to the aesthetic problem ofhow to make appropriation perceptible as theft without being prosecuted, but also provides a continuous supply ofinformation to the secretive networks ofspecialized knowledges ofDJs and connoisseurs. 1have so far been hesitant to suggest in what exactly The KLF intervened. Certainly their use ofthe Brit-awards to stage a quasi-militant battle against the industry which formally recognized them as skillful and imaginative musical authors oftheir Gary Glitter/Doctor Who versions stated as clearly as they possibly could that listeners should not trust what they are hearing. But moreover it was the music industry and the pop music audiences which seemed to disturb The KLF with their apparent indifference to the 67 blatant restaging ofwhat Frith (1987) calls "the slide from 'fakery' in tenns oftechnology to 'fakery' in tenns ofcommercial manipulation" (267). He continues, "Two sorts of insincerity are confounded and we end up with only the anonymous session men who can call their work 'honest'." In fact, The KLF were critical ofthe apparatus while being fascinated by it, being hailed as they were in music joumalism's version ofauteur theory. But how is their critique different from the kind ofcontempt underground Dl's show in their defacement or disregard for the products ofpop music that they are commissioned to remix? What intervention does overt sampling make that covert sampling cannot? The distinction can be made at one level by drawing attention to how the relationship with the music industry is articulated. DJ culture's originality-through dissimilitude constructs a kind ofseparatism by means ofstructural rearrangement ofthe materials or totally abandoning the provided materials. As Goodwin puts it, "Listen to Arthur Baker tum m-o-r group Fleetwood Mac into a modemist avant-gardist (on his remix of 'Big Love') and what you hear is a steadfast refusaI to settle for the pleasures of pop fonnula offered in the original. But the point here is that this aesthetic isn't postmodem at all- it is modemist, with a dance beat" (47). More to the point, High DJ culture does not really reject authorship outright but merely the way authorship has drifted towards the ownership ofan image in popular music. The KLF's critique through-copying corresponds more to what Goodwin would calI the self-conscious hype ofthe postmodemist plunderers who attempt to communicate to their audiences that they are copying. The difficulty ofdisrupting the habits ofattributing authorship to sound recordings is then apparent whenjoumalists begins lauding The KLF as authors ofstate of-the-art pop music. The KLF and DJ culture thus disrupt each other's modes ofauthorship: The KLF were desperately trying to tell its audience that they had copied (albeit in a well-done way) everything they were credited with as authors. They thus renounced musical authorship ofthe sort DJs considered to be the only important form. At the same time, The KLF's "work" was in fact their carefully constructed image crafted by means of copying and recombining the personae circulating in mass media. They had almost as many pseudonyms as records and it is perhaps the latter that acted as the tag for the former. The self-cancellation ofeach consecutive image was perhaps a means of avoiding the stifling control ofthat image by the industry that owns the rights to it. Paradoxically, what the firing of a machine gun at the Brit-awards and the announcement oftheir departure from the industry signifies to me is that The KLF were more concemed with the authenticity oftheir image than the credibility oftheir music. Audiences and musicians (even those that present themselves as nùn-musicians) cannot easily dispense 68 with authorship or authenticity. The critique or distantiation from one kind of authenticity is, as Goodwin suggests, afforded by the invocation ofothers. Implications ofthe Narrative ofCreative Development As 1have shown in Chapters Two and Three, the discursive community ofprofessional Djs and their audiences have developed an interpretive framework for judging the quality ofsample-based works. The credibility ofa DJ in hislher use ofa sampler has tended towards microsampling, both in the sense ofthe minimal use ofsamplers and the use of samplers in such a way that prevents the recognition ofreference. Reynolds summarizes the historical tendency 1have detailed through practitioners' discourse in the last two chapters: By 1990, sampledelia had blossomed into a more subtle and covert aesthetic. Hip hop and rave producers increasingly eschewed blatant lifts in favour ofmicroscopic fragments from obscure sources - partly out of a desire to be more creative, and partly because music publishers had their hawk-eyes trained on the extra royalties they could glean by prosecuting unauthorized usage oftheir clients' compositions (365). Thus, another fonn ofcovert sampling has developed within those cultures that were founded on conspicuous sampling. Conspicuous copying was troubled not so much by the System (the music industry, presumably) but rather by Dl culture's installation of a new optic for viewing sampling as self-expressive throughout the previous decade. Thus, the difficulty ofgetting outside ofmodes of authenticating works through attributions of authorship was compounded by the dissolution ofthat alternative on which DJ culture had turned: genre. The emergence ofthe Dl-star system in the 1990s would position Dls not only above copying but also beyond genre. In an review ofDl discourses one can readily find a kind ofrestlessness, an urge away from the present style towards something which is not yet fully fonned. There is a risk in emphasizing the temporality ofDJ culture ofreproducing that narrative by suggesting that the culture developed from a mode ofcopying and replay to one of production. 1have intervened in this narrative by first ofaIl suggesting that copying is not simply expunged but rather covered over or made transparent. 1have also argued that copying has a value as repetition and recurrence. Finally 1underlined the persistence of the conspicuous copy in dance music in the work ofThe KLF. According to Intercord's international product chief, Jergen Kramer, The KLF made the difficult transition from 69 British dance music culture to German radio by means ofwhat they copied: "We were able to break The KLF via radio and discotheques because oftheir melodic appeal" (Weinert, 1992). But l suggest that the popularity ofThe KLF's conspicuous copies was enabled by the pleasure ofrecovering "point by point, what they already know, and what they want to know again"(Eco 164). In other words, it was the pleasure ofseriality which characterises pop cultureforms more generally that The KLF's audience seems to have enjoyed. This is perhaps why hockey fans refer tothis anthem as "The Doctor Who Song" and not by its actual title "Doctorin' The Tardis" with its implied forgery. Conclusion We are at a fork in the road, or rather, that is how l have decided to present the material in the sequence ofchapters, ifyou have chosen to read it that way. If, like Reynolds, we accept that theft has "dropped offthe agenda", then the debate becomes centered on stylistics. However, The KLF did not merely aestheticize resistance but were attempting to develop a practical programme for resistance through copying. We will be examining traces ofthis programme in the subsequent chapters, but here l will point out The KLF's short period ofactivity was effective in a way that other similar projects were not. While other guerrilla samplers disrupted the pleasure ofthe conspicuous copy through a divergence from popular musical song structure, The KLF's hits sounded like hits, both because they copied other popular songs and because they were in tum pieced together in the form ofpopular songs. The deployrnent ofthe repetitious strategies ofthe popular music industry was in the end what frustrated their goal ofmaking people care that they were copying. Even with the glaring ideological contradictions l have underlined in the story ofThe KLF, the mysterious duo provided a key insight: copying is not inherently subversive ofauthorship and, for The KLF, covert copying was the lifeblood ofthe routine attribution ofauthorship in popular music culture. The challenge then was to create moments ofdisruption through subversive repetitions, reenacting resistance in the guerrilla warfare style but also offering something "real" on which to anchor that resistance. That reality, l suggest, was an insight about the power and pleasure of repetition in popular music and the equally "real" opportunity repetitious strategies thus held out to non-musicians. The KLF were not, however, the first nor the last to shift away from copying as a priori resistance to authorship and towards the conspicuous use of copying as repetition or recurrence. In the two chapters that follow l examine the way Dl culture in the 1990s gradually faced these conspicuous copies and their déjà entendus on an increasing number of fronts. 70 CHAPTER FIVE: Bootlegging: Losing Faith in the Funk Sou. Brotherhood While the rave culture oflate 1980s and early 1990s produced a number ofDJ godstars as weIl as a parallei culture ofDJ-worship, it was also at this time that the organization of the rave culture industry was beginning to pose problems for the discursive edifice ofthe Art ofdeejaying. Graeme Park, a renowned club DJ in England, put it thus in 1991: If you've got an hour and a halfyou can take your time and enjoy yourself. You can't do that ifyou've got 45 mir.utes. That's what 1hate about the weekenders [raves], they want to have as many DJs as possible. That probably goes back to 89 when it suddenly became how many name DJs there were on the flyer. 1think with the new breed ofDJs, that's aIl they know. With those raves, it got to the point where people were judging raves not by the DJs but what lasers there were and smoke machines and how many K the sound system had and was it turbo? 1mean, what's that got to do with dance music? (DJMagazine August, 1991: 16) In Park's rather pessimistic description ofthe "new breed" ofDJs and dance music fans, we get a glimpse ofthe way DJ brand names were becoming surface effects amongst a panoply ofsmoke machines and automated lights. In clubculture, resident DJs have time to "sculpt" the sound and the crowd not just for hours each night, but over the course of consecutive weeks and months; in rave culture the sheer number ofDJs who perfonned troubled the by-then routine claims to individual authorship ofthe night's sound mix. As promoters booked dozens ofDJs in competition with rival promoters, DJs barely had time to mix in with the previous Dl's set before they were being hurried offthe stage by the next one in line. The balance between projecting DJ personality and pleasing the crowd was being troubled by the kind ofco-ordination between DJs that was required to sustain a continuous I2-hour mix. Thus, the operations that bound DJ labor to the quality or uniqueness ofthe musical experience ofthe night were being backgrounded by the interpretive framework ofthe "rave massive". As opposed to a club, with its one or two resident DJs and the weekly guest, the identity ofthe person behind the tumtables was less certain at raves. More importantly, this "new breed" ofdance music audience did not seem to be as interested in who the DJ was: exciting lighting and big sound (to name a few ofthat culture's kinaesthetic enhancements) acquired a value at least as high as the expertise ofthe jock who was fortunate enough to be paid to play hislher records. 71 On the fringe ofDJ culture, conspicuous copying is practiced as a part ofthe ongoing guerrilla warfare aesthetic. It contrasts with the historical narrative l have established so far; it is a parallel aesthetic, a "minor art" in comparison with the Art of deejaying. In creative bootlegging, the maerosample and slight variations expunged from the methods ofremixing and sampling explored in Chapters Two and Three continue to be deployed. As DJ culture produces its own set ofchart hits, these songs are then subjected to versioning by means oftheirjuxtaposition with another song that is oftenjust as well-known. This practice ofcopying produces seriaI works that bear resemblances to not one but two highly recognizable songs. The practice is thus removed from the interpretive frameworks ofcommissioned remixing which are centered around originality-through-dissimilitude. The macrosampling (the sampling oflengthy bits of highly familiar tunes) ofthe more recent DIY remix culture carries the principles of creative bootlegging into the broader domain ofpop music. This kind ofaesthetic has been afforded, l suggest, by a certain distance from the social relations ofprofessional, underground DJ culture. largue that it might not disrupt the notion ofsound as property but it is a disruptive anomaly in the otherwise DJ-controlled stylistics ofsampling and remixing. l suggest that the "failure" ofthe guerrilla warfare aesthetic to be perceived as such by an audience that enjoyed its work as a kind ofseriaI product is actually a success in terms ofdisregarding the signifying system, methodologies and aesthetic values ofa by-then hegemonic DJ culture. More generally, this section examine the frays at the edges ofthe Art ofdeejaying. l will be focusing on the "creative bootleg" and will defer the discussion ofmixtapes to the concluding chapter. l suggest that both practices ofcopying momentarily disrupt the discursive operations that bind DJ labor to their unique sound "works". While the mixtape replicates and unsecures the Dl's performance from live and local contexts, the creative bootleg has until recently been exclusively practised by DJs but is now the center ofan emerging DIY remix culture. As l will show, the trade in mixtapes and the emergence ofthe "creative bootlegs" in the last few years are related to the ascendancy of DJs to star status. However, tbis is precisely the point where DJ culture has a difficult time containing the promiscuity ofits signs oflabor in the realm ofreproduced sound. What John Durham Peters (1999) caUs "the simultaneous promiscuity and invariance of phonographs"(l63) had provided the material basis for the shift from a culture ofthe copy and the replay to a culture ofprototypes and exclusive versions. The promiscuity of recordings in the emerging discursive communities on the edges ofDJ culture would aIl but eclipse the phonograph's invariance. Mixtapes, for example, are pirated tapes of star DJ sets, and in the discourse surrounding the replication and circulation ofthese tapes 72 there is clearly sorne anxiety about the blurring ofthe line between originality-through copying and copying-as-theft. Like sampling and remixing, mixtapes and creative bootlegs have been shaped by the "modem" aesthetic values ofinnovation and creativity. However, it is also necessary to engage with the specificity ofthe social context ofthese two forms ofbootlegging, so as to understand how the appropriationist products are circulated and interpreted at specifie moments and places. The mixtape and the creative bootleg in dance music culture are useful cases for exploring the potentialities ofcopying which l identified in Chapter One. l am not so much interested in the idea ofdisrupting the System but rather the way these appropriative practices might intervene more specifically in the hubris of DJ culture, its sense ofcultural progress that obscures the value ofrepetition, and the tenuous link between the creative labor ofDJs and their works. l will be drawing attention to the changing concept ofthe bootleg as the notion oforiginality-through copying developed in the discourse ofsampling and remixing is tumed towards the replication and versioning ofthe "official" appropriationist works. Planned and Unplanned Ruptures in the Illusion ofCeaseless Novelty It is difficult to give a sense ofthe feeling when, after listening/dancing to six, seven, eight hours ofanonymous, instrumental and sparse house or techno music at a dance club, suddenly a familiar tune or vocal hook bleeds into the mix. That moment, when the DJ decides to mix into the minimalist microsamples a melody or rifftaken from a Madonna or Michael Jackson record and looped over and over, always fills the dancefloor and these tend to be the most memorable moments, at least for me. Perhaps it is the stark contrast between music that you have never heard before and will never likely hear again (anonymous/exclusive records that go out ofstyle within weeks) and something that is instantly recognizable and which resonates with other moments ofmusical experience in one's lifetime. Perhaps it is because these samples are not hidden or cut and mixed to the point ofimperceptibility but reference a shared popular music pasto Whatever it is, these moments ofmusical "likenesses" or recurrences (and they are only moments, usually withheld until the end ofthe night/morning since too much referentiality is a sure way to lose credibility as a DJ) are like sudden flashes ofrecognition after many hours of amnesic presentness in the realm ofabstract and anonymous sound. It is also worth pointing out that these more memorable moments are associated with DJ personalities. l can remember not only the club in which l heard these 73 "unofficiai remixes" but aiso the DJs who played them. In the dance culture ofthe 1990s, which so unashamedly perceived itself as progressive and forward moving, the convergence ofnovelty and "underground" ideology permits very little room for Top 40 records. As with all "indie" or underground music scenes, innovation is understood to be determined by the degree ofdistance from the economic relations ofthe music industry. In the context ofunderground dance music, the mixing in ofpopular songs might he interpreted as populist and nostalgic gestures. DJ Danny Rampling puts it thus, "You've got to keep the crowd happy. Ifyou go out and play a hundred totally new things that you're really into and are really exclusive, not even released, OK it's good for DJs and a few ofthe crowd that are very musical, but a lot ofthe crowd are not farniliar with those records so they have to be broken in gently" (DJ Magazine July 1992: 10). In contrast, DJ Sasha lists the (carefully selected and placed) popular song as a way ofconstructing a unique DJ pèrsonality. For him, the playing ofa familiar pop song is a way ofdistinguishing one's sound from the broader DJ culture centered around exclusive records and anonymous tracks, as an article in DJMagazine highlights: "Every DJ has got their own style. The most important thing ifyou're starting out is not to just listen to a DJ that you respect and copy him, il's finding yoUf own groove and finding something different that's going to make you stand out..." The only DJ to get away with playing Whitney Houston after hours ofBelgian beats and techno still manages to keep dancefloors packed by including toe tappers: "1 like to drop Talk Talk tracks or Tears For Fears every now and then," he says. "It makes people sit up and say 'what's going on il's not like what we're used to hearing' it's the only way you're going to make it as a Dl 1 always look for different things and try and dig things out that people won't be expecting to hear rather than just playing the most up to date tunes. You drop one tune in a night that's totally different and it will stick in people's heads and they'lI go home remembering that you played that tune" "1 used to play Bruce Homsby's 'That's Just The Way It Is' at [dance club] ShelIy's (Stoke [EnglandD," says Sasha. "When people come up to me now and say do you remember ShelIy's it's tunes like those that they always talk about. They're the tunes that people remember, not the two that were the most up to date or the biggest tunes ofthe moment" (Dec 31 1992: 20). Curiously, what constitutes "totally different" is precisely what is "mainstrearn" in the context ofunderground dance culture. What stands out is precisely what has been heard dozens oftimes before on the radio and television because these tracks are systematically expunged from "progressive" DJ culture. In short, the familiar is different because in this particular context DJs play unrecognizable, anonymous tracks. 74 While Sasha was responding to the question ofhow to construct a unique DJ persona, he ends up foregrounding the strong desire for repetition in progressive dance music culture. Here we can see that the disruptive effects ofexact repetition are exploited to generate the unique DJ sound in a genre ofdance music called "progressive house". It is a curious case ofinverting the modem approach to repetition (wherein innovation is the locus ofvalue in the dialectic between scheme/variation) evident in the interpretive frameworks ofsampling and remixing. For Sasha, the abstract, instrumental, anonymous tracks ofhouse and techno culture are the ground on which to figure spectacular moments ofrepetition. Sasha is not the only progressive house DJ to use the familiar in this way. Against aIl ofthe efforts ofDJs to prevent it, underground dance culture does tend to produce popular tracks, and this generates the rupture in the illusion ofprogress within the club night itself. As Danny Rampling put it, But most ofthe time when you have those records [recognizable tracks] that you want to play aDJ has played them minutes before you come on. That seems to happen three out offour times. l don't know whether it's bad luck or what but that changes things round and in a way that's not a bad thing because it keeps things fresh (DJ June 1992: 10). The futurity oftechno and house might in this sense be a modemist aesthetic alibi for the recognition ofrecurrence. Typical ofDJ culture, Rampling concludes that exact repetition within the night itself- which would seem to disrupt the illusion ofrelentless progress in dance music culture - is not a bad thing because this marks the end ofthe tune's lifespan as it will be replaced by another, thus ensuring the sense offorward movement. As l have pointed out in the other sections ofthis thesis, it is important not to assume formaI principles or musical practices are inherently disruptive. Disruptive effects have to be reinvented in different contexts. DJ culture's pursuit ofnovelty produces a degree ofsameness (DJs are after the same exclusive tracks) which can be disrupted by the recourse to the popular and familiar. However, DJ culture continually overtums the familiar records when they no longer distinguish DJ personalities. Time and time again, the aesthetic value ofinnovation seems to regulate repetition, to the point where repetition is "not bad" because it is an indication that things need to change. However, in Sasha's and Rampling's interviews, it is evident that the pleasure of repetition cannot be suppressed entirely within the "progressive" dance music culture. Moreover, the management of innovation as novelty in dance music culture has ensured 75 that when repetition does occur, it is altered in sorne way. The creative bootleg, which is an unofficial remix made entirely of large "cheeky" samples from familiar records, is one ofthe most recently developed ways ofdoing this. Although it may be difficult to substantiate the claim that underground dance music culture is an aesthetic ofrepetition in the sense that Snead (1998) argues is characteristic ofblack culture, 1think the case ofthe "creative bootleg" and "mash-up" are better understood through the formaI principle of variabi1ity, as discussed by Eco (1997). In contrast to the covert sarnpling and anti appropriationist remixing aesthetics, the innovations ofthe creative bootleg and the mash up do not seem be any more important to practitioners and listeners than the scheme. Unlike other kinds ofunofficial versions central to the formation ofdub, disco, house, etc., the creative bootleg has generated an aesthetic ofseriality that seems to be more resistant to anti-appropriationist reversions to "creation from nothingness". This is because creativity is demonstrated entirely within the selection, the copy and mix. Rather than using the repetition to foreground the original material, everything is copied conspicuously from popular records recognîzable to a wide (i.e. non-Dl) audience. 1999: The Re-emergence ofthe "Creative Bootleg" in Dance Music Culture Unofficial remixes are as old as dance music culture itself. However, as the dance music industry internalized the Dl and the DJ's mode ofreactivation (beat-matching, mixing, remixing), records were released with acappella (vocal-only) and instrumental versions.25 They enabled Dls to remix popular records live, mixing the vocals from one record with the instrumentaIs ofanother. In the Dl discourse surrounding this kind of live remixing, the creative process is in the selection and placement or juxtaposition ofacappellas and instrumentaIs. At first, it is difficult to judge whether this creative process is understood to be entirely intellectual or intuitive. As Dl Danny Rarnpling, who is famous for this kind ofremixing, put it in 1992, You can'tjust get any old acapella cut and run it over the top ofeverything, it's got to sound right. There was a time when a lot ofthat was going on, acapellas going over the top ofrhythms, which just sounded really bad. Getting the acapella out ofthe box and trying-it with any rhythm, whichjust wasn't happening (DJ Magazine December: Il). 25 Rather than relying totally on commissioning rernixes in advance, cross-over hits could be produced by releasing exclusive acapella cuts to the DJs, so the pop song could be custornized on site to the ever changing fads ofdance clubs. 76 The aleatory aspect ofthe process is backgrounded in the interpretive framework for judging the "weIl-done" remix, thus elevating the expertise ofthe DJ who senses intuitively what kinds ofrecords are appropriately coupled. Recently, however, there has been a resurgence ofthe aleatory kind oftnixing, but they are "premixed" on bootlegged vinyl or on compact disc; they are not exact reproductions ofalbums or singles but lengthy and familiar samples are used to generate "substantial similarity". In the last decade, the "creative bootleg", which precedes DIY remix culture, emerged in dance music culture where it played an important role in refreshing the unique sound ofDJs, reproducing ofthe division between DJs and audiences through rings ofexc1usivity, and last but certainly not least, generating the mystery, anticipation, and acknowledgement of recurrence through seriated fonns ofrelease/distribution. In remixing and sampling, practitioners established ways ofappropriating material so as to create substantial dissimilarity between copy and copied to the extent ofrejecting appropriation altogether. In contrast, the "creative bootleg" is a direct replication ofDJ technique, using large portions oftwo or more records. In July of 1999, the familiar voice ofEnglish dance music DJ Pete Tong (who hosts the Essential Selection on Radio 1 every Friday night in addition to writing a monthly colurnn in Mixmag, deejaying at clubs and running a record label) wrote in Mixmag: No sooner did 1harp on about bootlegs last month than we're awash with sorne really creative ones. Everyone's playing what l'm calling Shady Fatboy - the incredible drum 'n' bass eut up ofEminem's 'My Name Is' and 'Rockafella Skank' [by Fatboy Slim]. Sorne boots aren't as shady as they seem, like Basement Jaxx's bootleg of '1 believe In Miracles' meets 'Red Alert', which is coming as the B-side of 'Rendez Vu'. Then there's a slight evolution from bootlegging into independent records with big cheeky samples. 'Chicken Lips' is the leading example at the moment - a great track based on Roy Ayers' jazz-funk classic 'Running Away' (July 1999: 7). July 1999 marks a crucial tuming point for the status ofthe bootleg, as one ofthe key "tastemakers" ofdance music culture officially threw ms support behind them after his initial hesitation. As with the discourses ofsampling and remixing, copying is not opposed to creativity in Tong's affinnative piece in Mixmag. With established dance music producers like the Basement Jaxx rendering these bootlegs not so "shady" (i.e. "mashing up" their own tracks), the bootleg becomes enculturated into DJ culture. After July 1999, Tong would drop a "bootleg tip" now and again in his Mixmag column, indicating the development of a new category ofrecords outside official and unofficial remlxes. 77 Why was Tong hesitant to support these "big cheeky samples"? 1suggest that the kind ofcreativity found in the creative bootleg deflected the etiquette and notions of originality-through-copying developed in remixing and sampling discourses. Using popular rather than obscure records and large rather than imperceptibly small samples, the bootleg did not provide the signs ofcreative labor developed in remixing and sampling. The apparent deflection oforiginality in bootlegging cannot be entirely smoothed over by Tong's certification ofthese records. The bootleg might still be able to disrupt DJ culture's perception ofitself as progressive, as weIl as the hierarchy ofskills identified by Straw (1995), that is, the privileging ofconnoisseurist knowledge over the familiar record or "crowd pleaser" and intuition over technical skills and trend-spotting. Moreover, the "modemist motifs" and aesthetic criteria which, as Straw observes, "continue their half-life" in dance music culture are troubled by the residual pleasure of the repetition to which the thriving activity ofcreative bootlegging attests. One ofthe most effective tactics in the creative bootlegger's arsenal is humor. While bootlegging is certainly one avenue through which the popular and mass reproduced is made exclusive again to DJs through white-label versions, the bootleggers' sense ofhumor militates against the DJ culture's secrecy and seriousness. As the DJ godstar phenomenon reaches unprecedented, bloated proportions, the bootleg and the writing and speech surrounding it exposes the craftiness in DJs' self-presentation as a kind ofvanguard. Let's look at a specific instance. Making Fun ofthe Craft and Craftiness ofCopving: The Mixmag Bootleg Satire A month after Tong's embrace ofthe creative bootleg, Mixmag published an article called "Bootlegging for Beginners". The magazine assigned two ofits employees to write a story about bootlegging through the eyes ofthe bootleggers. The two amateur bootleggers (borrowing equipment from friends and apparently funding the experiment themselves) were to produce a bootleg, make a few acetate copies, and send them out to a number ofhigh-profile DJs. As they put it: "Our plan was simple: we'd make a bootleg and, without using any Mixmag connections, get it played by a big-name DJ. How hard could it be?". Indeed, the value ofthis article is that it shows the points ofresistance and points ofease in the process ofmaking a bootleg. As we will see, the use of "connections" tells us something about the social dimension ofcopying, the way in which making, circulating and playing (for an audience) ofthe bootleg, while it might work on the edge ofthe music industry, is structured by the power relations ofthe clubculture 78 industry and the professional DJ community. The present analysis examines the ways it troubles those relations and the ways in which it reproduces them. This media stunt was orchestrated to test the ease ofbootlegging, what Schwartz would call its craftiness, "mercurial ifconstant attempts to avoid the burdens of apprenticeship, long labor, tedious rehearsal, & all the steps an honest person should take to make something, or to make something happen" (2000: 57). In light ofthe mystification ofDJ labor that 1described in Chapters Two and Three, this is a fascinating example ofthe "how-to" type recipes ofmusic-making in dance music joumalism, but it also confronts the suspicion surrounding bootlegging. It is precisely'the duplicity or deceitfulness ofbootlegging, its apparent exploitation ofthe spatial and temporal gap between production and reception and its disregard for filial relations between works and producers that underlies Sarah McLachlan's anxious remarks in 1999 conceming the unauthorized proliferation ofher works: "There are apparently tons and tons ofbootlegs out there, and that irks me. If someone is selling 30,000 copies and making all the money from them, 1have a problem with that, because ifs my work. 1slaved over the piano".26 That is to say that slaving over the piano, and not saving as a digital file, is what constitutes the craft ofmusic. One year later, McLachlan's dance music collaboration with Canadian electronica duo Delirium made a rare and enduring appearance in the pop charts and dance clubs of both Europe and North America. As McLachlan's record company began commissioning a number ofremixes, the ties between creative labor and copying became more tenuous: "You don't want your song to be bastardized," she said. The idea ofbootlegging as a shortcut through the conventional process oftalent development is selectively applied to the copying ofindividual works, and yet, when remixes (even official ones) exhibit too much originality, they become perversions or "bastardizations". The creative bootleg is ofcourse illegal, but until recently they were rarely sold but given away to DJs. When DJs play them on the radio, royalties are paid to both parties that have been copied, as ifthe DJ mixed the records live. The first thing that strikes me about the Mixmag bootleg its anonymous aesthetic. Consistent with the KLF's self-presentation as thieves, the duo are photographed wearing pig-faced masks not so much to avoid prosecution (the bootleggers themselves suggest that bootlegging is like home taping, "everybody does it and no one is ever prosecuted") but as a way of performing the role ofthe bootlegger. The anonymity ofbootleg traffickers is detached from its function and used for stylistic effect. The anonymous pig-faces lend the event 26 Carrie BeIl, "Artists take it to the net," in Billboard November 13, 1999. 79 the exciting aura ofillegality while at the same time gesturing humorously towards the greed and profiteering usually considered to be the motivation ofbootlegging. In this case, however, the reward does not appear to be monetary. Indeed, the duo continually remark about how much fun they are having producing not just the bootleg itself, but inventing their persona and the identity Qftheir "work": "We settled on Armand Legpull [a reference to DJ godstar Armand Van Heldon from whom they "borrowed" material] and "Boogie Rockit" [referencing the Herbie Hancock record they also used]. Oh, how we laughed" (93). Certainly it is worth considering that the bootleggers were in this case "commissioned" to give the songs the bootleg treatment by their employer, Mixmag. The economic interests ofcreative bootleggers will also become more clear in final analysis. The whole escapade is, however, centered around the pleasure ofgoing through the steps ofcreating not just bootlegs but the highly-prized white labels ofdance music culture more generally. At every step, the experiment is a parody ofthe etiquette and conventions ofthe mysterious process ofmaking anonymous house music tracks. When they have their "hours ofwork turned into a (nearly) proper record" (an acetate bootleg) at a record pressing plant, they write: In front ofthe machine there's a bloke who plays the track incredibly loudly, and fiddles with a bank ofknobs. l1's polite at this point to say stufflike 'Fatten up the bass a bit' or 'More compression'. Nobody knows what it means, but it doesn't matter 'cos the engineer will ignore you and set it all how he originally wanted it (91). But the parody does not simply reject those conventions either. It points out the way, in practice, individual authorship is contested by the contributions ofworkers along each stage ofa record's (re)production. In the end, when their bootleg is finally played by a star DJ, they are ecstatic ("we danced around like a couple ofoversized Duracell bunnies"). Moreover, their knowledge ofthe conventions ofDJ culture, and their ability to make fun ofthem, is in part what enables their bootleg to get the attention ofthe star DJs. While 1have been hesitant to daim that any ofthe appropriative practices of dance music culture democratize music-making, in this case the process ofmaking music is at least de-mystified. Speech about music (or, in this case, writing about it) both de and re-mystifies the process ofmaking music. In the anti-appropriationist discourses of sampling and remixing, we have seen how reversions to "creation from nothingness" can render sampling and mixing as mysterious as any traditional art. In fact, DJs seem to 80 overcompensate for the always-present suspicion ofwhat they actually do in the DJ booth, that is, how much ofwhat one hears can be attributed to the expertise ofthe DJ. This overcompensation can be seen in way the club is structured, establishing distinct spaces for DJs and audience. Further, DJscontinually foreground the importance of intuition and traditional musical skills in mixing and selection. But here, making the bootleg is shown to be "harder than we thought" but also reducible to three basic steps: making it, cutting it, and sending it out. This reduction ofcreative labor to a level ofordinariness more akin to preparing a meal does not detract from the craft ofbootlegging. In fact, the other important function ofwriting about sampling, deejaying, rernixing, etc., that is, to make the creative labor of copying perceptible, is also a central to this article. It edits the perception ofcopying, rendering it a creative process, but it does not do this through mystification. In the low point oftheir narrative, when it looked as though their record would miss its window and not be played by a star-DJ, the duo doubt the ease ofbootlegging: Morale fell to an all-time low. The rest ofthe office laughed and cruelly asked how much we had wasted on the bootleg fiasco. It looked like there really was more to making a bootleg thanjust banging a couple oftunes together and sending it out to the right people (93). Yet, when the bootleg finally gets its two minutes of long-awaited "needle tirne" in the spotlight, it appears that it is as simple as that. In their description ofthe technical process ofmaking the track, however, they make the labor-intensive craft ofbootlegging perceptible: The whole process was not as easy as we expected. Recording music is the opposite ofsex: everything takes longer than you think it will. Even though it took three days to see it through to a finished DAT [digital audio tape] which we could take to the cutting house (90). The narrative rnakes bootlegging a craft, that is, an anonymous, labor-intensive, time consuming process ofmaking sornething and making something happen. It manages to make copying a creative process, but without recourse to the notion ofthe author-as originator or mysterious artistic intuitions. This is evident in the analogies to crafts other than the techniques of collage and montage: "The best way to operate was to leave on record (Boogie Monster') more or less in one piece, to forro the basic rhythm. Then chop the other one up into bite-sized bits to sprinkle over as fiavoring" (90). 81 Through this narrative and recipe, the merger ofcraft and craftiness is uncovered. The bootlegging duo trouble the work and ward ofthe established appropriationists of dance music culture (remixers, samplers, DJs) by exposing the craftiness involved in the process ofmaking these products: They admit to two "cheats" where they use Mixmag resources and contact information to get the record played on a BBC radio show which the magazine sponsors and to send the bootleg to the house, rather than to the record company office, ofthe star DJ who ended up playing the record. They also trouble the notion ofthe DJ as an individual point oforigin for the unique sound by emphasizing the non-isolation ofthe music-making process. They make the intemalization ofthe DJ and club clientele as audiences explicit. The former is "virtually present" in the process ofproducing the bootleg through the strategie selection ofsamples: "Then we realized: the top DJs are over 30, and they love a new tune rnixed with a golden oldie" (90). The latter is present in the decision ofwhat proportions of each record to appropriate: "two tracks going full pelt for five minutes is wearing on the listener" (90). The recipe for a well-done bootleg also foregrounds the centrality of "nonaesthetic" concems in the aesthetic ofbootlegging. The selection ofrecords for the particular dispositions ofstar DJs exposes the precision marketing ofthe "ami commodity" as part ofthe craft ofbootlegging. This is also evident in the packaging of the record (titling and choosing a pseudonym) and sending it "to our carefully selected targets" (93). In fact, this may be the most important aspect ofthe narrative, since it problematizes the very ground on which so many claims to the Art ofdeejaying and sampling are made, that is, that selection in underground DJ culture is unrestrained by these "nonaesthetic" concems and so "creative" in the independent and autonomous sense. Finally, the centrality ofnotions ofthe audience in this discursive construction of the bootlegging process underlines the communicative dimension ofcopying.27 The record was finally played at a "spin off' between star DJs Armand van Heldon and Fatboy Slim. As it turned out, Fatboy Slim's decision to use the record was directly re1ated to the context: the record was a bootleg ofone ofhis "opponent's" records (the "spin off' mimicked a boxing match) mixed with a Herbie Hancock record. For a few 27 Other communicative functions include the humorous titling ofthe track and the note attached to the record with a cel1 phone number to contact. The acetate itself is a signifier. As Fatboy Slim (the star DJ who finally played the bootleg) put it, "1 get sent loads ofrubbish demo tapes, but ifs rare to get sent an acetate which you can actually play out" (93). 82 briefmoments, this bootleg disrupted the delicate set ofrelations between DJ labor and the work: Armand does a double-take as Norman [aka Fatboy Slim] plays our butchering of his [Armand's] 'Boogie Monster' creation. What a sweet moment - to then see them chuckling over it, and Norman showing Armand the note we sent out with the record. But even though Armand looked amused, he only let our tune play for a couple ofminutes before he whipped it off(93). Whose record is this? The anonymous bootleggers who made it? The DJ, Fatboy Slim, who now "owns" and "broke" the tune (played it publicly for the first and probably the last time)? Armand van Heldon who "contributed" halfofthe source material? Or Herbie Hancock who probably still has no idea that he also "contributed" to this record? The bootleg is "substantially similar" to van Heldon's tune but through its entanglement with Hancock's tune, the record is not quite his in the authorial sense. There are a number of people who can lay claim to the uniqueness ofthis record, and only two ofthem are legal authors ofparts ofil. The craftiness ofDJ culture was for a moment exposed as Van Heldon's double take was triggered by the realization that his opponent had access to an exclusive "likeness" ofvan Heldon's tune that he (both as producer and DJ) had no idea even existed. For two minutes, the bootleg sends a message to the producer(s) ofthe original: sounds committed to permanence are, as John Durham Peters puts it, promiscuous, that is, they are unsecured from their contexts ofproduction and used in unpredictable ways by their listeners/copyists. Creative bootlegging more generally shows how tenuous the links are between creative labor and works in DJ culture. A number ofbootlegs throughout the 1990s were officially released. In one particularly popular bootleg, Armand van Heldon's authorized remix ofTori Amos' 'Professional Widow' was merged with 'People Hold On' (the original) by Lisa Stansfield. Van Heldon was remunerated for his work on the Amos song on a rate basis, and he saw no part ofthe royalties when the extraordinarily popular bootleg was released by Amos' record company. l have highlighted the way in which this instance ofbootlegging momentarily troubles the authoriallinks between DJs and works. There is another important dimension to this case, however. The situation is far more complex than one of subversion. First ofaH, what the bootleg actually does depends in part on its reception. Indeed, for many listeners, the record was heard as a kind ofcompliment from van 83 28 Heldon to Fatboy Slim, perhaps even as an excessive homage between godstars . Secondly, even ifthe bootleg does destabilize Dl culture's redrawing of authorial boundaries, it does not necessarily subvert the inequalities instantiated by any sarnpling done by Fatboy Slim in the making of"The Rockafeller Skank". In fact, the bootleg might further those inequalities. As discussed in Chapter Two, Fatboy Slim deployed microsarnpling to produce the hit track on his album entitled "You've Come A Long Way Baby," featuring a photograph ofhis massive record collection on the cover. Microsampling enabled Fatboy to generate the climatic moment in the song where the Lord Finesse vocal "Right about now, the funk soul brother", relentlessly repeating for several minutes, dissolves into a synthetic-sounding tone with no linguistic meaning. The demonstration ofDl labor and expertise in microsampling eclipses the referentiality of the sample, especially in that climatic moment. 1now want to consider Lord Finesse's perspective on being copied: Right now l'm getting ready to go to court about that thing, because ofthe way he took that sample. Let me tell you how it went down... They said, 'Y0 Finesse - we used your voice on a chorus to our song. Would you clear it?'. So me being a person for hip-hop, sure y'know... no problem. 'We'll pay you $4000 to clear it'. So 1said, straight - no problem, cool. Now they ain't sent me a tape and said, 'Y0, listen to this'... They sent me a piece ofpaper - 1 ain"t really look at it, y'know - 1told 'em, 'lfyoujust used it for a hook and a chorus to a song - fuck it. Vou can have that.' So 1 sold it out to 'em. Now, l'm in Sweden - l'm going from the airport to my hotel. 1hear the song on the radio - l'm like, 'Oh... '. Next time 1speak to them, 1said '1 know where you got that from you got to clear that... on the master side.' They said, 'Nah - we don't have to clear that because it's your voice'. 'But you sampled that from a master!' 'Nah we don't have to clear tha". 1said, 'That was supposed to be a hook to a song you didn't tell me it was the whole record!'... So boom! Vinyl Dogs said they were going to sue 'em - and 1said 'get what you can'. Then Vinyl Dogs turned and said, 'We can't sue 'em because you gave rights to the master.'. So when 1 signed the first piece ofpaper, they said 1gave 'em rights to the master! 1gave them rights to my voice on the publishing - but how could 1 28 This is one ofthe messages communicated by the bootleg. The message ofcourse depends on the interpretive framework ofthe listener. How many ofthe listener's at this "spin-off' knew that this was a bootleg ofvan Heldon's tune, not an official remix, played by Fatboy Slim? How many cared? Furthermore, the disruptive effects are also quite obviously lirnited by this knowledge. A review ofthis performance in Ministry magazine (Mixmag 's biggest competitor), for example, perceived no such disruption ofDl culture or the Dl godstar system. In fact, the reviewer did not know 'Boogie Rockit' was a bootleg and was thus interpreted as a sign ofthe Dl stars' decadency, "holding hands, cheering each other's mixes and playing each other's songs" (August 1999: 147). 84 give them rights to something you know 1don't own?! It's like if l'm on your record and they sampled MY voice from YOUR record, they know they sampled it from there. The record don't say 'Lord Finesse Records' - it says this guy's [Fatboy Slim's] record label [Astralwerks]... It was underhanded. Then after aU the success they got and the exposure they don't thank nobody! There's a lawsuit against them to take place because of aU the money that was made. They then tumed round and asked ifthey could use the same thing for a remix - they paid me $20 grand for that - but they wanted me to do the intro over just for them..." [interviewer] "So that way they also own the publishing..." Righl. Then they asked me to rename it 'Vinyl Dogs Vibe'! 1 said, 'But 1 can't name it 'Vinyl Dogs Vibe' because it's not 'Vinyl Dogs Vibe'! It's something l'm redoing for you.'They said, 'Our lawyer wants you to re-record it for us' - now why's the lawyer asking you do that ifyou feel you did nothing wrong? It's so they can tum to Vinyl Dogs and say, 'Yo - we didn't use your record. We used this.' . Naah - it's not gonna work. They're going through the lawsuit from heU right now. That whole situation was underhand and sneaky, because it makes you think you can't reaUy tmst nobody. The methodologies ofDJ authorship manipulate the perception ofthe copy first through selecting obscure records such as the Vinyl Dogs' whose records are notoriously difficult to find and have much value for connoisseurs. Fatboy's selection enables the display of both extensive ~owledge ofdisc culture but additionally microsampling enables the copy's referentiality to be edited and the DJ's technical know-how to be displayed in an array ofsound-processing tricks. In this case, Fatboy was able to exploit both the referentiality ofthe sample and then, in the climax ofthe song, stage his techno-magic show. This is the routine way in which DJ's display their expertise in sampling and it is the basis on which credit shifts from the musicians who made the original to the DJ who selects and recombines il. For the most part, this system works. As Lord Finesse puts it, in hip hop there are certain codes ofconduct in sampling that allow for a certain degree ofexchange through sampling. A $4000 fee for the use ofhis voice is much more than most hip hop and dance music DJs would ever pay out for samples. However, for Lord Finesse, Fatboy broke the unwritten mIes of sampling, used his voice as the centerpiece ofa new song and paid Finesse only a flat fee. Secondly, the legal technologies of authorship enabled 85 Fatboy to become the owner ofthe master, and for Finesse it was thus absurd to be asking for the rights to use his voice. Thus, the de-signing of Finesse's voice through sound processing was accompanied by his signing away ofthe rights to his own work. The absurdity ofthis particular case does not end there. As the song became a hit in many countries around the world, a number ofremixes were commissioned to market the song in, amongst others, the hip hop scene. Instead ofmaking the remix from the master that they already owned the rights to, Astralwerks instead wanted to have Finesse re-do the retro-active remix ofwhat for millions ofpeople was now the original, "The Rockafeller Skank" by Fatboy Slim. As ifthis was not enough, Astralwerks then wanted to exploit the credibility ofVinyl Dogs (the group with whom Finesse recorded) in the hip hop scene by re-naming the song with a reference to Vinyl Dogs. 1have traced out the culturallife ofthe "funk soul brother" sample to underline the complexity ofthe social relations ofsampling, re-recording, and re-naming. While the Mixmag bootleg might trouble for a few seconds Fatboy's authorial claims for a few people who knew that the recording was a bootleg, re-recording and re-naming does not reverse the inequalities instantiated by Fatboy's and Astralwerks' re-recording. 1 would imagine that ifLord Finesse happened to read the Mixmag article or hear the recording of the spin-off (which is circulating through Limewire and other MP3-sharing networks), he would find it neither reassuring nor amusing. Finally, this case ofsampling, remixing and bootlegging suggests that neither sample-clearance nor prankish bootlegging necessarily flatten out the social inequalities instantiated by the act ofrecording. The massive economy ofmusical rights that now revolves around DJ culture ensures that the social relations ofre-recording will continue to become increasingly complex. Thus, the difficulty ofgeneralizing the effect of sampling or bootlegging as subversive theft becomes more evident. With this in mind, 1 now tum to the parallel universe ofcreative bootlegs as it beginning to exceed the boundaries ofDJ culture and dance music. The Emergence ofDesktop "Bastard Pop" Three strands ofdiscourse can be easily identified in speech about music. The first occurs in trade discourse and it rarely distinguishes profiteering bootleggers from the "creative" and "artistic" remixing and sampling with which this project has so far been 86 concerned. It considers aIl unauthorized reproductions to be opportunistic, criminai and even immora1. 29 The second strand, on which 1have tried to focus this project, continually reasserts the distinction between creative and various kinds ofunoriginal copying. The third strand ofdiscourse in fact presumes the ubiquity ofthe first strand, and considers bootlegging as a thoughtful or ideologically potent plagiarism which challenges theownership (or at least the concentration ofownership) ofcopyrights in sound recordings. This last strand is exemplified by the self-conscious provision of "proofofpiracy" in the media stunts ofthe hit-making bootleggers, The KLF. More recently, creative bootlegging has been practiced outside ofdance music culture. In the past two years, hundreds of"mash-ups" have been produced (pseudonymously of course), like "Musical Know How" by Freelance Hellraiser which mixes the vocals ofYoung MC's "Know How" with the instrumentaIs ofMadonna's "Music", or "Being Scrubbed" by Girls On Top using the vocals ofTLC's "No Scrubs" on top ofthe instrumentaIs from Human League's "Being Boiled". They are produced in software studios such as Sonic Foundry's Acid and Steinberg's Recycle, which work with sound in the form ofloops. These loop-based music programs have a set ofadditional tools that make re-composition much easier. Loops are moved around on the screen with a mouse, and "snapped to grid", that is, their tempos are adjusted automatica:ly with those ofother loops. While the programs enable the extreme-sound processing displayed in sampling, what is striking about the way these programs are used in DIY remix culture or desktop bastard pop is that the referentiality ofthe loops is left intact. Although one could do a close analysis ofthe significance ofthese unauthorized couplings, it suffices to say that the selection ofthese sources runs counter to both the insularity ofunderground DJ culture and the elevation ofselection as an intuitive and intellectually laborious act. The term "mash-up" describes the way these tunes appear to be haphazardly strewn together from disparate temporal and spatial domains. Missy Elliott's anti-appropriationist statement which 1quoted earlier, wherein she suggested that by being more original (i.e. not sampling) makes a musician more susceptible to "style biters" proved to be prophetie: Missy Elliott's voeals are, along with Eminem's, the most oft-used "resourees" in this DIY remix culture. Does the new bootleg culture reeently eovered by The New York Times30 and Mixmag31 indicate a shift towards a realignment ofcopying with intertextual repetition 29 The Record lndustry Association of America defines bootlegging as "reproductions of unauthorised recordings." 30 Neil Strauss, "Spreading by the Web, Pop's Bootleg Remix," The New York Times May 9,2002. 87 and seriaI aesthetics? Predictably, the interpretive frames which 1traced through the discourse ofappropriation in the first chapter ofthis project have been deployed in the discussion ofthe new DIY remix culture. In interviews and on their websites, amateur remixers present themselves as outlaws and their practice as ideologically potent plagiarism. As with the "thoughtful plagiarism" and guerilla warfare aesthetic of The KLF, the use oflarge portions ofhighly recognizable songs in remixing is accompanied by a discourse ofappropriation as subversive theft. However, like mixtapes, DIY remix culture is disruptive not so much ofthe System, but rather ofthe aesthetic criteria and interpretive frameworks ofDJ culture. Specifically, the new remix culture is based on the sampling ofobscure rather than popular records in a way that makes the copy referential or recognizable as a copy (but not necessarily inferior to the original). Two significant shifts can be observed here. First is the shift away from the demonstration ofexpertise through the selection ofrare records or records exclusive to DJs. Second is the shift away from the signification ofcreative labor through the use of microsamples and heavy sound processing. The first shift has been afforded by the by now familiar sphere ofdigital file-sharing. The DJ tools which once made remixing aDJ practice (acapella and instrumental versions released to DJs and speciality shops) are being distributed in digital form on the Internet. At present, the use ofacapellas or rare tracks as source material signifies the mastery offile-sharing programmes rather than the ownership ofhuge numbers ofvinyl records collected over time. The shift from popular to obscure records is connected to the second shift by digital file sharing. Creative labor is no longer marked by selection, microsampling or sound processing beyond recognition. Rather, the investment oftime and the expertise associated with careful selection ofsource material and sound treatment are being displaced by an aesthetic ofseriality wherein the copy's referentiality and recongizability are key. The emphasis shifts towards the speed ofthe remixer and the skill ofmaking unlikely "couples" work together. As the concept oforiginality's social function in limiting the potentially infinite replication ofartistic works (Lury 1993) has been altered towards the propulsion ofthe "near-infinite realm ofsound morphing possibilities" (Reynolds 1998a: 364), so too has bootlegging been transformed into something that bears little resemblance to the illicit trafficking and production ofunauthorized recordings. In fact, bootlegging has shifted from exact to generative or seriaI copying, where it is not so much "fakes" that are being 31 See June, 2002 issue. 88 sold but tokens ofa type which are rarely sold but exchanged through the secretive networks ofDJ culture and invested into the unique sound ofDJs. Rather than the illicit mass reproduction ofmusical commodities, bootlegging is more akin to versioning in Jamaican dub culture, where the mass reproduced is reduced to the exclusive version inaccessible through record stores. Nevertheless, whenever copying is not framed as creative, it tends to be valorized as subversive. Mark Hosler ofNegativeland, a band which famously sampled large portions ofmusic from D2 and soon found itselfembroiled in a copyright controversy, valorizes copying without asking through the notion ofappropriation as subversive theft. Like Frith (1986), he suggests that technological development is making copyright law obsolete: Eventually you'll be able to put CD-quality sounds up on the Internet and people will be able to download it anytime they want. It doesn't matter how hard you try to own it, control it or legislate it, the technology has gotten away from them. Of course l'm being optimistic, but l think that the copyright laws are going to become outmoded (LA Weekly, July 21,2000). An alternative way to describe the disruptive effect ofthe creative bootleg is in terms of infiltration because it never quite gets out ofeither the protective secrecy, notions of propriety, and relations ofproduction ofDJ culture. Indeed, while the Mixmag bootleg duo emphasize the accessibility ofthe means ofproducing bootlegs, a side-bar listing various bootlegs produced over the last decade evaluates them in terms oftheir rarity. It is no coincidence that DJs are often the ones producing, playing and owning these exclusive bootlegs. The figure ofthe DJ is also virtually present in the moment of production through hislher internalization as audience. The values and dispositions ofDJ culture thus shape the selection ofsamples and the style oftheir assemblage. Finally, in order to reach club clientele, the creative bootleg must be noticed by a DJ; the cutting of digitally-made bootlegs to acetate is indicative ofwho these records are for and to whom they must appeal in order to find a broader audience. As the Mixmag bootleggers put it: "Odd as it may seem, even people like Judge Jules and Pete Tong (who get upwards of 100 records a week) take note when an acetate arrives, because they simply don't get that many. Sending an acetate sends the message: '1 am important, listen to me' (91). A surprising number ofrecent bootlegs do not address the DJ at all. That is, the selection ofsamples, the titling oftracks, and the storage medium do not beckon the DJ to 89 listen. One indication ofthis is that the samples are not always taken from dance-oriented records, and do not conforrn to the aesthetic criteria ofDJ culture (even the most eclectic DJs have limits) as they produce increasingly "unlikely marriages" or "odd couples" of popular tunes. Dangerous Dan Pearce (feat. Muppet), for example, takes up Richard James's invitation to sample in bulk and splices the harsh electronic percussion of Windowlicker (ofhis Aphex Twin pseudonym) with Whitney Houston's "l'm Every Woman". In the emerging (but still tiny) DIY remix culture ofthe past two years, the material culture ofvinyl is being displaced by recordable compact discs in club nights like King ofda Bootz in London. Leaving behind DJ culture's regime ofcopying is made possible first ofall by the move away from the connoisseurist values attached to record collections. Already in the creative bootleg ofdance music culture, the prestige and knowledge associated with obscure vinyl was being displaced by the functionality of compact dises. The Mixmag bootleg duo put it thus: "a lot ofeffort was saved by using CDs ofthe tunes. On vinyl, tempos can wander - you can waste a lot oftime trying to get stuffto fit when it's not properly in time" (90). The image ofthe lone DJ piecing together songs in a room full ofrare records is becoming less prevalent. This is because these amateur remixers are not DJs or owners ofvast record collections. They are taking the acappellas and instrumental versions ofsongs from file-sharing programs on the web and circulating them not on acetate but on recordable CDs and MP3s. Carolyn Krasnow's description ofthe authorship ofdisco deejaying made disco seem rather aleatory: anything could be mixed into the set. Yet, everywhere in dance music and hip hop culture, the opposite seems to the rule. In order to be marked as creative, unique or original, selectors must demonstrate knowledge ofthe most obscure or the most revered discs ofDJ culture. However, in the DIY remix culture, the most prized "mash-ups" are those between extremely disparate discursive domains which base58.com calls "unorthodox marriages" (http://www.base58.comfbsx.html), for example, one called "1 Wanna Dance With Numbers" using an acappella of Whitney Houston's "1 Wanna Dance With Somebody" over the instrumentaIs ofKraftwerk's "Numbers" and "Computer World". The signs ofcreative labor are found not so much in heavily processed samples from rare records, but rather in the most odd combinations ofrecords taken from all-too-familiar songs. Thus, both sources ofsamples in these mash-ups are often highly recognizable. Generally then, what the DIY remix culture does in terrns ofthe framework that l have set up in this project is realign copying with r~currence. Certainly the pleasure of 90 the bootleg is in the dynamic ofrepetition and variation, but the scheme assumes a new importance in DIY remix culture. Even while opening up Dl culture's secretive and constrained guidelines for selection, bootleggers invent various limitations to draw attention to the seheme rather than the innovation. We can see this in an album called Deeonstrueting Beek wherein the bootlegger announces the self-imposed limits on replication - taking and recombining material only from electronicalalterative auteur Beck. A similar project involved producing an hour-long mix exclusively made up of intros from popular songs. Thus, the bootleg articulates itselfto a non-connoisseur audience, indifferent to the secretive pleasures ofDl culture. 91 CHAPTER SIX: Outro to Mixtapes and Ways of Authenticating the Unauthorised Rather than suggesting further research 1am using the space ofthe conclusion to continue uncovering the subtle breaks in the seams of late DJ culture's notions ofprogress and originality-through-copying and replaying. The purpose ofthis chapter is to clarify my framework for exploring the social relations ofcultural reproduction through analysis of the interrelated ways authorship functions in formaI and in informaI systems of recognition for creative labor. The case ofmixtapes, a rather kitschy underside ofDJ culture that is not as easily framed in terms ofthe originality-through-copying or copying as-critique, presents a challenge to both DJ culture's containment ofthe eopy within the Art ofdeejaying as weIl to the generalizations ofthe social implications ofcultural practices that tend to be derived from sustained analyses such as this one. An analysis of the speech surrounding these recordings oflive and studio DJ sets uncovers sorne trouble for the DJ godstar, even as these tapes are marketed, like official DJ mix CDs, by foregrounding the "name DJ". The discourses trouble both the ideals of authenticity characteristic of contemporary DJ culture and the boundaries oforiginality recast by DJ culture that protect Dl "works", methodologies, and secretive knowledges from emulation and copying. Finally, the links between DJ work and "works" are destabilized through a slight redefinition ofthe "work". So far 1have been attentive to the historieal shifts (and especially to DJs' interpretations ofthese shifts) in the relationship between the status ofDJ labor and the stylistics ofcopying and replaying. The ordering ofmy ehapters is intended to give sorne sense ofthe construction and subsequent dithering ofthe DJ as author. In this chapter 1 examine not so much the "conclusion" or "result" ofthe minor disruptions enabled by creative bootlegging and conspicuous copying, but rather 1consider listening again, specifically to those conventions ofreception surrounding a kind ofcopy that has been quietly replicating with DJ culture aH along. l redeploy the interpretive interventions that 1use in the previous chapters to explore and critique the social relations reproduced in the Art ofdeejaying. This time, however, 1want to look at the underside ofthe Art of deejaying by examining the curiously high value ofthe most unsophisticated and uncreative practice ofcopying in DJ culture. The copyists make no attempt to alter what 92 they copy or claim any significant contribution to the sounds therein. Yet the anonymous production ofmixtapes also installs a perception ofthe musical experience ofclub nights as irreducible to the expertise, labor or personality ofthe Dl. However, before analyzing the discourse surrounding mixtapes and making my own interpretation ofthe social relations instantiated by the cycle ofmaking, circulating and listening to them, l will re present the analysis and arguments l have made thus far, which will help specify what exactly is being troubled by these practices. Beginning with the analysis ofthe two central frameworks for making copying critical and creative, copying-as-subversive-appropriation and originality-through copying, l demonstrated how the practice ofcopying is made to conform to the aesthetic value ofinnovation and the broader Western cover-up ofrepetition in the notion of cultural progress. l suggested that Dl culture's forms ofauthorship were afforded by the ability to edit the perception ofcopying as a creative act, and to a lesser extent, as a practice that was independent from the rigid formulas and seriality ofmainstream pop production. l suggested that sampling, deejaying and remixing can produce the déjà• entendus ofexact repetition. The potential to disrupt the illusion ofprogress, ceaseless innovation and individual authorship has however been remarkably contained in "high" or "late" 01 culture by the deployment ofinterpretive frameworks centered around originality. In Chapter Two, l examined the general stylistic tendency that guides the practice ofsampling towards covert copying. In Dl discourse, the creative act was re-centered on selection and intensive sound processing which made both the intellectual and technical labor ofOls visible while simultaneously disguising the sample's intertextual reference. l underlined the way in which creativity and copying were becoming depolarized in Dl practices but that there was a pre-occupation in late Dl culture with containing the implications ofthat depolarization through a range ofdiscursive operations and copy rites (secrecy and selection). Most notably, there was a rising tide ofanti-appropriationist reversions to Romantic authorship discussed in Chapter Two in the analysis ofthe discourse ofpractitioners ofsampling, even as the figure ofthe Romantic author had been disassembled in copyright law. Self-sampling was cited as one way ofposing as the "origin" ofthe unique sound produced through copying. More generally, secrecy 93 surrounding source materials and the selective display ofcertain components ofsampling methods helped to sediment the by-now familiar image ofthe DJ as a creative subject and transpose that subject into the image ofthe DJ godstar. 1 then turned to remixing in Chapter Three and found a similar tendency in musical discourses towards "total production" and away from the generic remix formula as remixers seized upon the opportunity afforded to them by their status as DJ-auteurs or godstars "beyond genre". Just as sampling tended away from the recognition of recurrence and reference, remixing was practised according to a model ofdissimilitude, staging the production skills and creative independence ofthe copyists by using the original as a benchmark for difference. My general point throughout has been that sampling methodologies and aesthetic conventions are a crucial part ofthe construction ofthe DJ as an author. While interviews make these claims to originality and ownership explicit, the way in which sampling is practised is also a technology productive ofcopying and replaying as creative acts and the DJ as an author ofunique sound. What has tended to be lost in the mystification of, and secrecy surrounding, DJ labor is the ordinariness and pleasure of crafting seriaI copies. The aesthetic tendency towards "total production" has meant that the recognition ofrecurrence has been increasingly split along two listening positions: the DJs and connoisseurs who can recognize the canonical but obscure reference and the "naive" listener ofthe dance club who presumably enjoys the intratextual repetitions of microsampling. The recognition ofrecurrence outside the narrow frame ofindividual records and particular subgenres has been offered, strangely enough, by those works that are framed in terms ofresistance to the System. Just as the Art ofdeejaying makes copying a creative act, the notion of appropriation-as-subversion is a way ofmaking copying a politically subversive act. In Sam Binkley's (2000) terms, these interpretations seem to be committed to the redemption ofthe repetitious strategies ofthe popular by extending to them the aesthetic values ofhigh art: experiment, innovation and progress. However, in this chapter, we will be looking at the copy as a copy, or more specifically, as a repeatable musical experience. Given the implications 1have thus far outlined ofthe tendency in discourse about deejaying (both in the academy and in interviews with practitioners) to frame the 94 copy as something else, l am here reconsidering the theoretical and empirical value ofthe copy as a copy. Mixtapes: When is a Copy Just a Copy? Mixtapes replicate the eut 'n' mix technique not as discrete tracks or remixes but rather as 60 or 90 minute mixes using a few dozen records. Thus, the technique ofmicrosarnpling and sound processing do not occur here, techniques which tipped the balance ofthe innovation-scheme dialect in favor ofthe former term, and have been central to the propriety ofremixing and sampling. The value ofmixtapes for both the record business and DJs is in their promotional value, that is, their ability to market new music at "street level". l will be discussing this important function, which is still bound up with the aesthetic value ofinnovation and the management ofinnovation as novelty. l will also suggest that the function ofthese tapes is determined by the place and moments in which they are reactivated, and that there are other interpretive frames in which the value of these tapes is rooted in repetition and nostalgia. Having collected techno and house music mixtapes for years, l was delighted when a student at a high school l visited in Jamaica ("twinned" with a school in Toronto at which my dad was the principal) gave me a reggae cassette. l thought that it would be a dub of an album, but as it turned out it was a "soundc1ash" mixtape, a recording made at a reggae dance. This was my first glimpse ofthe parallel mode ofproduction and aesthetic ofseriality between Jamaican reggae and North American house and techno. l was even more delighted when l listened to the seamless blend ofrecords and noticed the crowd cheering faintly in the background. Incidentally, Toronto is one ofthe largest markets for Jamaican mixtapes (Streetsound, no. 81: 27). In the 1990s, Toronto had a substantial market for other kinds ofmixtapes as weIl. Having very little interest or patience for vinyl collecting, l kept up with trends in dance music largely through mixtapes, which could be bought at speciality record shops and c10thing stores selling c1ubwear. Gaining access to information about vinyl records was time consuming and the most useful magazines that published this information were British and subscriptions were expensive. In contrast, all l needed to know were the names oflocal or international DJs and their associated strands ofhouse or techno in order to navigate the wall ofmixtapes in the tiny stores that sold them. And in contrast to speciality record shops, wherein the secrecy ofDJ culture is perceptible in the 95 silence ofthe browsers, the staff at "rave and club paraphernalia" shops were eager to find the right mix to match whatever sounds 1was after. An awkward description ofthe strand ofmusic 1wanted (for example, "early morning tech house with a bit of a dark edge and no vocals") would suffice to get a 60 or 90 minute seamless programme of something close to what 1had in mind for the same price as one 12-inch single. Mixtapes highlight the contradictory status ofthe copy in dance music and hip hop culture. They are at once the most tangible form ofthe creative labor ofDJs, bootlegs ofthe records used to make them, promotional media for both the records and the DJ, and important gauges of"critical consensus".32 For many small record labels, mixtapes and "needle time" are the only affordable ways ofgenerating exhibition value for their products. Furthermore, in cities in places like Canada, where record presses are extremely rare, mixtapes and other forms ofre-recording like CD compilations are crucial to the circulation ofmusic from the centers ofhip hop or dance music production. The cultural value ofmixtapes is often expressed in terms ofan educational or developmental too1. They are embedded in the legitimating discourse surrounding bootlegging more generally, where it is suggested that unauthorized reproduction is a kind ofseriated pattern ofreplication and innovation, but one which leads to growth and development. As Cynthia Rose (1991) puts it in the context ofUK designer fashion bootlegs, kids leamed to make money selling copies ofsportswear, T-shirts, designer clothes. Any logo was fair game - and once they had shifted a set ofsuch goods, entrepreneurs might use the eamings to bankroll designs oftheir own. From bootlegging came a range ofyoung businesses boasting colourful titles (48). Similarly, a rave promoter in Toronto argues that, "the rave scene in Toronto was made on mix tapes. They promote the new sounds and the global vibe. They bring in an overall understanding ofmusic from around the world to help develop our own scene to the point where we in Toronto can create our music and our DJs" (Streetsound, pg. 9). 32"Deciding which projects to rerelease can be difficult, but Fuchs says he is helped by indicators such as club play and consumer requests. Another method is to track what bootleggers are including on their tapes. Says Fuchs, 'The true trick to marketing the product is to know when a critical consensus about a catalog artist is reached, so that when you put out an act like an Ultramagnetic Mes, you know it's going to sell'" (Billboard, June 24, 1994). 96 But is there a value to the mixtape in its repetition? In other words, is its entire value located in the way it generates economic growth and musical knowledge and talent? l want to suggest a few ways in which the mixtape's value might be expressed in less "progressive" and instrumental terms. How might the mixtape permit an acknowledgement ofrecurrence? Is the making, circulation and reactivation ofmixtapes constrained by the same secrecy, aesthetic values, and notions oforiginality that we have seen in discourses ofdeejaying, remixing and sampling? In order to answer these questions, the analysis needs to shift its focus from the DJs to the audience. Stephanie Smiley ofMoonshine records, one ofthe first companies to move towards brand-name DJ mixes and away from generic compilations, suggests that this move was an attempt to use the credibility accumulated by certain DJs: The kids have been buying the mix tapes based on who made them. I1's just natural to market the music in this way because with a weIl known DJ doing a megamix on CD we've hit what the kids are drawn to because there's a name attached to the whole package (27). However, Smiley misses a crucial component ofthe value ofmixtapes: the amplification ofthe crowd noise on recordings oflive club events. l prefer mixtapes to compact dises, and this seems to be consistent with "underground" ideology which values products according to their degree ofdistance from the record industry. In addition to its underground credibility marked by its lack ofcover-art, photographs ofDJs, and the logos ofcompilation product lines, the sound quality ofmixtapes is much worse than legal mix CDs. This noise has acquired even more value in its rarity, as the proliferating legal mix CDs purposely exclude it. l like the noise ofthe crowd which bleeds into the mix on illegai mixtapes. It marks the tape with the noise ofa particular moment and place, something which is expunged from both the studio and live mix CDs put together by record comparues. Perhaps the erasure ofthe crowd is a consequence ofthe notion of the audience the producers have intemalized, an audience that values saniefidelity aver other signs ofintimacy. In fact, the unintended mingling ofcrowd noise with the DJ's mix on mixtapes is an accidentaI but nonetheless effective virtual inclusion ofthe audience. As Roger Foldes-Wood puts it (rather snidely) in his article on rave mixtapes in DJMagazine, "Listen to your tape, wear your t-shirt, wallpaper your room with flyers and hey presto you might as weIl have been there" (10). But what differentiates the mixtape from the mix CD is that the mixtape presents itself as a document ofan event 97 that really happened (i.e. not a studio event) and the crowd noise is, for me, an authenticating mark. Mixtapes are documents ofcultural events, not just pirated copies of musical works. Re-Searching for an Aesthetics ofMistakes As opposed to studio mixes, these tapes are full ofmixing eITors and sound problems. They present the Dl as a person whose skills are never quite able to overcome the circumstances ofthe club environment. One ofmy favorite mixtapes is from a 1992 rave in England where a Dl calling himselfthe Producer has to stop a record because the people on the stage are dancing so enthusiastically that the tumtable needles keep bouncing. Someone cornes on the PA and shouts to the crowd: "Ifyou can't dance lightly, 1 suggest you get offthe stage". The Producer starts the record again, and the needles continue to bounce now and then. These kinds ofaccidents give the impression ofa less-mediated experience ofthe event. As Zuberi (2001) has noted, mix CDs are supposed to work as club simulations. However, these CDs, as well as radio broadcasts efface the most meaningful indicator of"being there", that is, the cheering, chanting, whistling, fog-hom blaring, needle-bouncing crowd that occasionally disrupts the progress ofthe music itself. A number ofbootlegged Dl mixes that can be downloaded from the Internet are actually bootlegged in the most traditional fashion by smuggling a tape recorder and a small microphone into the club. They are then converted into MP3 format and "shared". The sound files bear the marks oftheir mode ofproduction, as the crowd is amplified in excess ofthe music due to the bootlegger's position on the dancefloor. When the precision cuts and mixes ofsample-based music and seamless deejay mixing have eliminated noise, the "aesthetics ofmistakes" can be found re10cated to those bootlegged recordings where cheering and talking contaminate the mix. Another bootlegged CD that somehow made its way into my apartment features anonymous friends ofthe bootlegger saying: "l'm going to go check out what's happening near the stage", and at another point someone asks ifhe or she "needs anything" (i.e. "pharmacological enhancements"). If, as Straw (1995) has argued, the dynamics ofthe club environment revolve around the opposition between the secrecy and restraint ofthe Dl booth and the vulgar displays ofmovement on the dancefloor, then the mixtape reanimates that dynamic. But in the amplification ofthe crowd, the listener senses that the booth has been folded into 98 the noise ofthe dancefloor. In any case, these mixtapes present an entirely different set of relations than the studio mix. The pleasure ofthe dance club is not reducible to the skill ofthe DJ, and the crowd noise exposes this obscured fact ofDJ culture. The tapes invert the pedagogical connotations ofthe DJ godstar phenomenon, presenting the crowd as contributing to the club's sonic environment, and the DJ as playing to the crowd, rather than administrating it from above. The Notion ofthe Audience as Copyists OJs do not like the idea oftheir unique sound "likeness" floating around out oftheir control, and this discomfort points towards another potential disruptive effect ofthe mixtape on the ties that bind DJs to works. As Thomton has pointed out, the displacement ofrecords into public performances was first met by hostility from musicians, and then gradually DJs were admitted into the Musicians' Union that initially protested their activities. Today, the displacement ofrecordings meets social resistance in the opposite direction, from public performance to private listening. The discomfort DJs have with mixtapes is not reducible to their exclusion from the profits generated from this kind of bootlegging. Rather, DJs are uncomfortable with the way the mixtape exposes their work to the amateur DJ's scrutiny; their unique mixes can thereby be repeated/re-played exactly by other DJs. One DJ quoted by DJMagazine makes the disruptive effect of exact repetition and replay explicit: There's very little sacred anymore. Before ifyou did a particularly good mix or something special, people who were there might talk about it, it was a part ofthe whole experience ofbeing there, now ifyou do something a bit different it' s aIl over the place within a week. l've heard warm-up DJs copying bits ofmy set, exactly (July 1992: 10). The mixtape is the counter-point to the ascendency ofthe DJ to godstar, and ofthe leverage ofthe DJ mix to the sacred work ofart. Mixtapes expose the craftiness ofthis redrawing ofproperty boundaries around appropriationist works. With the intemalization ofthe notion ofthe audience as copyists, we can see that the mixtape is not just a developmental tool but rather a nexus ofde-signings ofsacredness ofthe DJ's appropriationist work through displacement (out ofthe live clùb environment into 99 homes), glare (listeners are moœ familiar with the DJ through recordings than live performances), multiplicity (replicating the live DJ set over space to a wider, more dispersed and anonymous audience), transparency (seeing-through the seamless sound mix to the material culture on which it is built), and exact repetition (re-mixing the records exactly by people other than the 'author' ofa given sequence). Reynolds (1998a; 1998b) along with many record producers and DJs has suggested that DJs are the new god-stars ofdance music culture, acquiring the status of celebrity auteurs through the elevation ofthe DJ mix into the position ofa work ofart. However, there is an ongoing problem ofcontaining this work within the realm ofthe "live" because the Drs mode ofproduction is entirely within the realm ofreproduced sound. At the risk ofoversimplifying matters through a technological deterministic optic, the live mix becomes the "recorded live at..." mix with the connection ofstereo cables from the "line out" on the mixing console to a tape recorder. No microphones are required. Internationally recognized DJs turn up at raves or clubs sometimes minutes before they perform, and checking where cables are going is not a part oftheir routine. It is a situation wherein the live mix easily and stealthily becomes committed to tape to be sold in small record shops and replicated via tape trading or conversion into MP3 and "file-shared" on the Internet. Sorne mixtapes are authorized by the DJs, many others are not. The disruptive effect ofthe latter is most evident in the disgruntled words ofinternational DJ-stars who, unlike the less celestial DJs who rely on mixtapes for self-promotion, can contemplate the ideal situation ofcontaining their mixes within live performances and licensing deals for remixes and compilations. "1 hate it when people bootleg me at raves," DJ-star Keoki told Streetsound. He continues: Promoters often record from the soundboard, and that fucks everybody. Sorne promoters insist, after 1 ask them, that no tapes were made, but they make DATs [digital audio tapes] anyway. These tapes come back to me, people ask the narnes of songs, and 1can't always tell them because 1have no track listings (Gerard, 1995: 8). The unsecuring oflive performance from their local contexts through technical replication subjects the ephemerallive performance to repeated listening by a dispersed audience. As sorne ofthese listeners pursue the information about the records in those mixes, the secrecy ofDJ culture is turned on its head by producing embarrassing moments wherein the DJ must admit that s/he does not know what records s/he played. 100 In these situations, neither the listeners nor the DJ will know what those records are called or who made them, but at least the listeners know what they are talking about! The record industry's strategy for dealing with mixtapes was not so much to crack down on their production and sale (although this did occur in Toronto), but rather to intemalize a notion ofthe audience as copyists. One ofthe most interesting solutions to the secrecy ofDJ culture has been devised by dance music magazine Mixmag in partnership with BBC Radio 1. In the last five or six years, Mixmag has published the names oftracks, artists and record labels played on its Essential Mix radio shows on Radio 1 that are designed to fit cassette tape cases and can thus be cut out and folded to accompany unauthorized home-recordings ofbroadcasted DJ sets. The title ofthis page in the back ofMixmag suggests, and even encourages, this novel mode of"reception" which is actually a decentralized replication system: "Your exclusive cut-out-and-keep guide for those moments when your finger accidentally hits 'record'," or "Last months' Essential Mixes, coincidentally in these cassette box sized formats". On the one hand, this might be reduced to the incorporation or realignment of an innovative and subversive practice with the marketing strategies ofthe dance music industry. However, from another perspective (specifically, David Hesmondhalgh's), this phenomenon indicates that the audience is "active" in the sense of actively copying and seeking out information about music. This kind ofaudience is precisely what enables the low-promotion costs in the "underground" dance music industry, enabling smalliabeis to put out records with little or no conventional advertising. Furthermore, the dissemination ofthis kind ofinformation about tracks and record labels tampers with the secrecy on which the credibility and heightened status ofthe art work or creative labor ofDJs is founded. For me, the value ofthese appropriative practices is not so much in their subversion ofthe System but in the way they problematize the values and mystique ofthe Dl-as-originator or as-godstar within dance music culture itself. Especially in its "incorporated" form, mixtapes accompanied by track listings reduce the glare ofinstinctual talents put forth by Dls as the key to the Art ofdeejaying, since that glare is always in danger ofbeing undermined by the DJ's dependence on connoisseurist knowledges which "may be codified for easy acquisition" (Straw 1995: 251). The Mixmag tape cases are an instance ofthis codification. Like this system ofcodification, the nostalgia surrounding mixtapes troubles a key component ofDJ culture's hegemony, that is, its perception of itself as progressive afforded by the use ofcopying to distance dance music aesthetics from the genre it 101 borrows from. Like aIl new communications media, mixtapes are in turn mediated through new modes of address, what John Durham Peters (1999) calls "communicative prostheses" which provide "new forms ofauthenticity, intimacy, and touch not based on immediate physical presence" (215). Bootlegging, like technical reproduction generally, must manage its own contribution to the gap between production and reception through the internalization and virtual inclusion ofthe audience (Lury, 1993: 6, 88). While bootlegged records are key to the mystique ofDJ-auteurs, there are a number ofother appropriative practices and discourses which reveal the ordinariness of creative labor in dance music culture. The more DJ culture builds up layers ofsecrecy surrounding the keys to the Art ofdeejaying, the more dance music listeners take pleasure in finding out the details ofthe material culture on which the Craft ofdeejaying is based. Thus, a column in Mixmag called "Music Institute" features questions from dance music fans who write desperate letters awkwardly describing the records they have heard by their favorite DJs, hopeful that columnists Bill Brewster and Frank Tope (who are DJs/record producers themselves) will lift the veil ofsecrecy. Contrary to the logic ofintellectual property, which rationalizes the ownership of copyright in artistic works by presenting innovation as dependent upon economic incentive (Aoki), the value ofinnovation is precisely what ensures the continued production ofillegal mixtapes. One ofthe reasons mixtapes have not been entirely displaced by its legal counterpart, the mix CD, is the speed at which they can be produced and distributed without going through a lengthy licensing process. This speed not only enables regular glimpses ofwhat other writers have described as the rapid mutation of subgenres (Monroe, 1999) and the communication ofstylistic changes in dance music culture but aiso contributes to that sense ofthe accelerated cultural movement (Straw, 1991). Thus, the tapes are at once interfaces with the cultural change as weIl as constructions ofthat dynamism. Pam Film ofProducer Artist Management puts it succinctly: "mix tapes come out so fast and regularly that those same kids will always be buying them" (10). However, the meaning and value ofmixtapes are partly in their "documentary" function. This is articulated by star-DJ Sasha as he describes a mixtape ofone ofhis first performances with his collaborator John Digweed: John gave me the tape ofthat first gig we did together as a present for Christmas. 1didn't know what it was at first, it just had a note on it saying, 'You might want to play this.' As soon as 1pressed play there's John on the microphone 102 introducing me in Hastings. You can hear the crowd and us two playing back to back... it brought tears to my eyes. It was a great present (Mixmag April 2001: 85). The unauthorized reproduction ofan early performance (the mixtape might have been a crucial component ofthe development ofhis by-now intemationally recognized name) obviously has a great deal ofsentimental value for Sasha. Its meaning is not contained within the interpretive framework ofinnovation and originality. In fact the noise ofthe crowd is a crucial component ofthe value ofthe tape in enabling nostalgic reminiscing. To put it bluntly, what authenticates this "work" are the various voices, most notably those ofthe audience. Furthermore, for a briefmoment the progressive image that "progressive house" Dls have oftheir music is disrupted by the déjà entendus ofexact repetition. And on that note... Re-considering Copying as Appropriation The recent history ofDl culture is marked by an often obsessive containment and social regulation ofthe disruptive potential ofits own practices ofcopying. To put it more clearly, the auteur theory ofHigh Dl culture "trains" the would-be Dl by setting parameters around what should be copied, how it should be copied and when it should be copied. What has been slowly dissolved in this shift towards "production" or "self expression" is not the practice ofcopying or even a model of copying for self-expression, but rather the perceptibility ofcopying and the recognition ofcopying as a way of deflecting the values ofcreativity and innovation. It is through these forms ofcovert copying that the Dl godstar has been staged. The aesthetic values according to which the DJ has been articulated as a creative subject have other equally important social implications, for they articulate the relationship between audiences and DJs most notably through the accentuation ofdifferences in expertise and knowledge In each successive phase ofthe encu1turation ofreplication technologies into music-making, l have noted the development ofmethods and discourses that regulate and legitimize copying by framing it in terms ofinnovation, creativity, or subversion. The discourse oforiginality-through-copying reaches its most extreme form when the remix or the sample-based track bears no perceptible relation to the original or source material. While practitioners clearly understand this as a positive tendency, l have argued that 103 something has also been removed or disconnected from the process ofcopying, that is, the recognition ofrecurrence. At the very least, what this discourse analysis demonstrates is that the regulation ofcopying is not reducible to the notion oforiginality enshrined in legal systems. Originality impacts sampling and remixing styles through various notions ofaudience internalized by practitioners. In addition to the "sample police" are the figure ofthe DJ, the abstract notion ofclub clientele and its mode ofreception, and other musicians whose work has become raw materials. The notion oforiginality has thus undergone substantial reworking in the discourses ofthe "non-musicians" (DJs, remixers, samplers). Notions of originality-througb-copying as weIl as more drastic reversions to anti-appropriationist ideas ofbeing original shape the way replication is used in music-making and thus directly impacts what we hear on hip hop and dance music records. The dominant academic and journalistic model ofappropriation does not allow us to see the transformation oforiginality, the shift in the status ofthe creative copy, and their aesthetic and social implications. Curiously, the conflictual model ofcopying, from Hebdige through to Frith and Coombe, does not prepare us for the subtle but nevertheless significant tensions evident in the discourse ofpractitioners, nor is it very useful for understanding how spectacular and conspicuous copying are actually interpreted by listeners. In this regard, the not-so-glamorous case ofmaking and listening to mixtapes can be understood to momentarily disrupt the illusion ofprogress in "underground" dance music culture by pointing towards the nostalgie experience they enable. They also trouble the tenuous authorial relations between DJs and their unique and exclusive sounds by undemüning the secrecy on which those relations depend. Articles in music magazines emphasize the profiteering and opportunism behind mixtapes and the lack of creativity or contribution in this kind ofcopying. Mixtapes are not always authorized by the DJ in the same way as a remix or a creative bootleg but they are not "authored" in the same way either. Instead mixtapes are interpreted as a document ofan ephemeral sonic event generated with varying degrees ofwilfulness by clientele and an array of .clubculture professionals. 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