Distribution Agreement In presenting this thesis or dissertation as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree from Emory University, I hereby grant to Emory University and its agents the non-exclusive license to archive, make accessible, and display my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known, including display on the world wide web. I understand that I may select some access restrictions as part of the online submission of this thesis or dissertation. I retain all ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. Signature: _____________________________ ______________ Brian A. Smith Date All Access: YouTube, the History of the Music Video, and its Contemporary Renaissance By Brian A. Smith Doctor of Philosophy Comparative Literature _________________________________________ John Johnston, Ph.D. Advisor _________________________________________ Deepika Bahri, Ph.D. Committee Member _________________________________________ Geoffrey Bennington, Ph.D. Committee Member Accepted: _________________________________________ Lisa A. Tedesco, Ph.D. Dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies ___________________ Date All Access: YouTube, the History of the Music Video, and Its Contemporary Renaissance By Brian A. Smith B.A., Appalachian State University, 2003 Advisor: John Johnston, Ph.D. An abstract of a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature 2014 Abstract All Access: YouTube, the History of the Music Video, and Its Contemporary Renaissance by Brian A. Smith This dissertation traces the history and evolution of what is currently referred to as the music video. Thanks to YouTube, The Prelinger Archives, fans, users, academics, hobbyist historians, and archivists, this history is now coming to light; it is currently being digitized and increasingly available to a global audience since 2006. The art form is often mistakenly thought to begin with The Beatles or MTV, but predecessors to the music video begin with musical shorts in the early 20th century. Through the 1940’s, several soundies were produced in America, which were also staged musical representations. Their momentum is carried on through various performances on variety television shows, generally from the 1950’s through the 1970’s. By the 1970’s, enough music videos were being produced to conceive of a channel like MTV, followed by VH1, CMT, and others. And in the 21st century, the advent of YouTube has provided a platform for the new music video renaissance as well as a platform for digitizing, archiving, and viewing early predecessors to the music video. Situated primarily in an American context, the many histories that comprise the music video are outlined and analyzed, offering a new vantage point in the history of American music. All Access: YouTube, the History of the Music Video, and Its Contemporary Renaissance By Brian A. Smith B.A., Appalachian State University, 2003 Advisor: John Johnston, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature 2014 Table of Contents Introduction: The History of the Music Video in Perception, Production, and Pedagogy Chapter 1: YouTube, the Music Industry, and the 21st Century Video Boom Chapter 2: Musical Shorts, Soundies, and the Origins of the Music Video Chapter 3: Music on Television: Evolutions After Soundies from the 1950’s to the 1970’s Chapter 4: Music Videos and Music Television: the Power of Exposure Conclusion: The Many Histories of the Future 1 Introduction: The History of the Music Video in Perception, Production, and Pedagogy All access. There is perhaps no time in American musical history where the ability to have digital access to any and all music – written, produced, filmed, recorded, lost, performed, shunned, or once dusty on the shelf - is as close to a reality as now. We have more and more access to art, music, information, discourse, and perhaps even cross- cultural understanding than ever before. Finances, profit margins, legalities, consumer demands, resource availability, social networking trends, breakthroughs in computer programming, and the fact that companies are finite entities that come and go by nature all create this ebb and flow of the access to new information, as well as new access to old information. The eight factors I have listed above have, in various ways, recently come together, and one of the strongest forces in the global, digital music economy is YouTube, and what several have deemed the 21st century video boom. In 2013, the Huffington Post reported that, according to Google Inc’s YouTube, “1 billion unique users were now visiting the video-sharing website every month, or nearly one out of every two people on the internet.”i Just after the end of 2013, Business Insider reported that the amount of traffic YouTube receives from mobile devices jumped from six percent to forty percent in two years.ii Music videos are, by far, the most popular kind of videos on YouTube. The world is now in a full blown music video renaissance, and now, thanks to fans, users, archivists, amateur and professional historians, record labels, and YouTube 2 itself, we are now beginning to have access to what one might call the history of the music video. Music videos are very rarely something a person can purchase, and therefore collect. Soundies were viewed on Panorams, musical performances on variety shows were viewed on television, channels like MTV, VH1, or CMT aired music videos all day long, and now YouTube allows users to upload music videos for free. While albums were purchased, owned, and collected by fans, music videos and their predecessors were not. The Prelinger Archives has a wonderful collection of soundies digitally available to the public, but YouTube presents the public with a format that, among other things, allows one to see and explore the entire history of the music video, and that history continues to grow as fans and users upload content they may have once had on VHS and have now digitized it, record labels are reissuing and uploading music videos made over twenty years ago and monetizing them on YouTube’s platform, and fans ‘collect’ them by creating YouTube channels. The history continues to develop not simply because time goes on and new or established artists create new music videos, but older content continues to be digitized and uploaded, and to a magnitude no one could have predicted. My own interest in the history and evolution of what came to be known as the music video is not merely academic, nor the simple fact I also happen to be a musician, but from working in the music industry doing, among other things, professional videography. It became the most popular aspect of my work because touring musicians were already or quickly realizing the importance of video to their careers, to building their audience, to booking shows at larger venues, and to further establish or mark changes in their own artistic identities and directions. This not only entailed directing 3 music videos, but work for internationally renown and large scale music festivals, crowd- sourcing material, multi-camera live shoots, interviews, backstage performances and behind the scenes material, and documentary work. Within a short amount of time, artists ranging from Matisyahu to the multi-Grammy award winning Alison Krauss, from New Orleans’ most popular band Galactic to MacArthur Fellow composer and performer Chris Thile, from Guy Clark to Gary Clark Jr., from Old Crow Medicine Show to bluegrass legend Peter Rowan. The latter I was hired to film as a special guest with the Grammy Award winning Steep Canyon Rangers in Asheville, NC; it is a town that is now internationally renown for its contemporary music scene, and it is no coincidence that it is situated in the Appalachian mountains of western North Carolina, an area that is historically significant in terms of its blend of Celtic, Scottish, old time, or what some generally refer to as ‘traditional mountain music’. Later, I would be hired to film Steep Canyon Rangers with multi-Grammy award winning musician Sam Bush, who has been named Mandolin Player of the Year four times at the International Bluegrass Music Association and was presented with a Lifetime Achievement for Instrumentalist Award by the Americana Music Association; on of the founders of the New Grass Revival, Sam Bush has had a dramatic impact on countless musicians. My own experiences at the Americana Music Festival in Nashville and International Bluegrass Music Association, recently held in Raleigh, NC have certainly informed my own understanding of the contemporary music industry, as well as working at major music festivals like MerleFest in North Carolina or Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, as well as smaller music festivals across the east coast. 4 I began to work closely with Carolina Chocolate Drops who have revived a relatively neglected aspect of traditional American music, notably African-American folk songs, instruments, and musical techniques that were common in the early part of the twentieth century. Their album Genuine Negro Jig won a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album and their popularity has generated greater interest in the history from which they borrow and to which they compliment, contribute, and pay tribute. And in one way or another, I have worked with nearly every genre of popular American music, with the exception of jazz which seems to be on the decline since its own popular renaissance in the 1990’s and early 2000’s with artists like Karl Denson, Medeski, Martin, and Wood, John Scofield, or Charlie Hunter.