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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Musical pastiche, embodiment, and intersubjectivity : listening in the second degree Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/92c7n0db Author Tonelli, Christopher Joseph Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Musical Pastiche, Embodiment, and Intersubjectivity: Listening in the Second Degree. A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Music by Christopher Joseph Tonelli Committee in Charge: Professor Jann Pasler, Chair Professor Norman Bryson Professor Michael Davidson Professor Jocelyne Guilbault Professor Mitchell Morris 2011 Copyright Christopher Joseph Tonelli, 2011 All rights reserved This Dissertation of Christopher Joseph Tonelli is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2011 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page ……………………………………………………………….……....iii Table of Contents ……………………………………………………………….…....iv List of Tables………………………………………………………………………....vi Acknowledgment ……………………………………………………………………vii Vita …………………………………………………………………………………...ix Abstract…………………………………………………………………………..…....x Introduction…………………………………………………………………..….…….1 0.1 Pastiche and Mimesis…………………………………………………….. 3 0.2 Pastiche and Other Forms of Imitative Practice………………………...…8 0.3 Popular Music and Pastiche: An Introductory Example………………....17 Chapter One: Rethinking Lacasse: A New Framework for the Study of Imitation in Popular Music……………………………………………………………………..…33 1.1 Part II: The Mashup as Autosonic Pastiche……………………………...54 Chapter Two Focused Transtextuality: Four Case Studies…….………………….....68 2.1 Example One: 1950s Rock & Roll in the 1960s…………………..……..70 2.2 Example Two: 1960s French Pop in 2000s America…...……………..…78 2.3 Example Three: 1970s “Stadium Rock” in the 1990s………………...….93 2.4 Example Four: 1980s Electrofunk in the 2000s………………………...101 2.5 Chapter Conclusion…………………………………………………..…120 Chapter Three: Sweeping Transtextuality………………………………………..…123 3.1 Example One: Sample-Pop’s Mechanism of Re-presentation………….124 3.2 The Hypertext/Hypotext Relation in Forrest’s Sample-Pop…………....134 3.3 Example Two: Chiptune’s Transgeneric Mechanism……………..……144 3.4 The Gaming Experience and Dynamic Induction………………..……..145 3.5 Early Game Sound and Music………………………………………….150 3.6 Defining Chiptune: Chip Music and the Demoscene.…………………..155 3.7 Handheld Gaming: Re-Setting Game Sound………………..………….160 3.8 Chiptune and Re-Presentation…………...……………………………...165 3.9 Gaining Control and Reformatting the Planet…………………………..167 3.10 Chiptune: Conclusion..……..………………………………………….172 3.11 Sweeping Transtextuality: Final Thought…………………………..…179 iv Chapter Four: Other Spaces Pastiche Might Lay: Minstrelsy, Mimesis, & Methodology…….………………………………………………..………………...181 4.1 Barthes’ Third Meaning……..………………………………………….188 4.2 Love and Theft: Staying Open to Signifiance………………………..…192 Conclusion……………………………………………………………….................195 References………………………………………………………………..................189 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Richard Dyer’s framework for the categorization of imitation……..……….7 Table 2: Serge Lacasse’s “Summary Table of Transtextual Practices in Recorded Popular Music.”……………………………………………………………………...36 Table 3: Comparison - Serge’s Lacasse’s “Summary Table of Transtextual Practices in Recorded Popular Music” with Revised Version of Lacasse’s Table……….........46 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For the unending support she has given me, my deepest gratitude needs to be directed to Dr. Jann Pasler. However, I want to thank Dr. Pasler not just for the support she has shown me, but for the dedication I have seen her give all her students and her program. I have witnessed this height of devotion nowhere else in academia. Equal gratitude needs to be given to my family. I have never had to doubt that my parents would support me through anything, and I know I could not have made it to this point if I did not have them to lean on. Leslie, my wife, has made great sacrifices to help me complete this work. I will always be grateful for the extremity of her selflessness and all the joy and love she brings me. Dr. Mitchell Morris and Dr. Jocelyne Guilbault have been incredibly inspiring mentors. I consider it a great honor to have such groundbreaking music scholars on my committee and want to thank them from the bottom of my heart for their participation. The participation of my “outside” committee members has been equally humbling. Dr Norman Bryson and Dr Michael Davidson have been generous with their time and I have benefitted immensely from their guidance. Dr. Anne Seshadri, Dr. Anthony Burr, and Dr Steven Schick have also shown me extraordinary support; their talents and kindness have left a permanent impression. Chapter Three, in part, has been submitted for publication as it may appear in The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies , Sumanth Gopinath and Jason Stanyek, eds., Oxford University Press, forthcoming. vii Finally, I also dedicate this work to all of the friends and mentors who have made my eight years at UCSD rich. viii VITA 2001 Bachelor of Arts, Trent University 2004 Master of Arts, University of California, San Diego 2010 Lecturer in Contemporary Music and Culture, Victoria University of Wellington 2011 Visiting Assistant Professor, Memorial University of Newfoundland 2011 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego PUBLICATIONS “The Chiptuning of the World: Game Boys, Imagined Travel, and Musical Meaning.” In Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies , edited by Jason Stanyek & Sumanth Gopinath. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. ix ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Musical Pastiche, Embodiment, and Intersubjectivity: Listening in the Second Degree. by Christopher Joseph Tonelli Doctor of Philosophy in Music University of California, San Diego 2011 Professor Jann Pasler, Chair Popular music studies, since its inception, has been centrally concerned with the ways music participates in processes of individual and collective identity construction. This dissertation argues that the field must also be concerned with the ways music participates in processes that counter the existential effects of identification. I argue that perception of music as imitation and, more specifically, a form of perception I refer to as “the event of pastiche,” is often a significant force in the service of such non-identificatory processes. Through discussions of music perceptible as imitations of 1950s rock & roll, 1960s French pop, 1970s “stadium rock,” and 1980s electrofunk, and discussions of the practices of mashup, sample-pop, and chiptune music, I locate the conditions through which musicians and listeners x have used sound to foster thought and feeling that they simultaneously affirm as the property of some Other. I offer conclusions based both on textual analysis of recorded and live musical “works” and discourse analysis both from written sources and field research. The dissertation offers new frameworks for the understanding of musical imitation and opens the field of popular music studies to the study of a social function, non-identificatory practice, previously untheorized in the field. xi Introduction Only activity is proportionate. It, and not mimesis, can bring an end to suffering. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment 1 Identity has long been the central concern of popular music studies. From its generative period in the 1960s and 1970s to its foundational period in the 1980s and 1990s on to present day, scholars have pointed to music as “an important way that millions of people find enjoyment, define who they are, and affirm group membership.” 2 They have concerned themselves with the roles music plays in the processes of forming, asserting, negotiating, or rejecting individual or collective identities. This has led to a great deal of important work. However, the emphasis on identity can obscure other important functions popular music serves. This dissertation is an attempt to open the field to consideration of one of these obscured functions, one I will refer to as non-identification. More specifically, it is an attempt to understand how this function is realized through reception of music as pastiche, and to radically revise how musical pastiche and musical imitation in general are conceptualized in musicology. 1 Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002): 150. 2 Andy Bennett and Richard A. Peterson, Music Scenes: Local Translocal, and Virtual. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004): 1. 1 2 By non-identification, I refer to encounters with the Other in which we neither identify nor counter-identify.3 Instead, what we feel is a simultaneous sense of self and difference to self. This “paradoxical” state is an embodied affirmation of the untruth of the principle of identification; it produces feeling that leads us to observe that at the same time I am and I am not. The principle of identification is the belief that A = A. Identification combines an awareness of one’s body with a sense of sameness with some other body. This embodied process always requires the silencing of difference to allow for the amplification of what is perceived as identical. 4 Stated differently, in order to feel the truth of the statement A = A,