Mashup, remix, fandom, intertextuality, music simulacrum Essay

Mashup, remix, fandom, intertextuality, music simulacrum - Essay Example Mashup is a music term that refers to skilful blending of two or more songs to achieve a new coherent composition, usually featuring various music genres. Another terms for a mashup are blend, bootleg, smashup, bastard pop, powermix, cutup and crossover. David J. Gunkel, Aram Sinnreich, Michele H. Jackson, Brian Lamb and Liam McGranaham are some of the authors who have written elaborate and scientific publications on the mashup culture. Although the term first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2000, the history of mashups is debatable. While the notion of a mashup as a 21st century novelty appears viable, the roots of a mashup can be traced to the early 20th century. The installation of Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel in1913 where he combined a stool with a bicycle wheel was a physical symbol for mashup (Levay 22). A mashup is â€Å"a fun and adventurous way to make something fresh out of something stale† (Gaylor web). Music mashup characteristics are addition ally attributed to musicque concrete, a form of music which evolved in the 1940s, where compositions were not limited to sounds from musical instruments (McLeod 81). The music community have come to a strong consensus on the origin of a mashup. They agree that part of the remix culture (Mashup) originated from Jamaica in the early 1950s Arguably, a remix is an umbrella term encompassing mashup among other music compositions. It is when Jamaican selectors or disc-jockeys composed first metatexts by playing live a series of records in the same key, tempo or theme. This gave grounds for the emergence of hip hop DJs several decades later (Brewster and Broughton 254; Levay 22) Ironically, these roots seem to contradict Sinnreich’s observation that a mashup is associated with white European logic as opposed to the Afro-diasporic hip-hop genre (Sinnreich 195-9). The fact remains that mashup, despite its Jamaican foundations, first gained major popularity in the United Kingdom. The f irst mashup that gained widespread media attention and broke into the mainstream across the UK was done by The Freelance Hellraiser in 2001. His â€Å"A Stroke of Genie-us† combined Christina Aguilera’s â€Å"Genie in a Bottle† and The Strokes’ â€Å"Hard to Explain.† While a mashup can be done manually, the most common production of mashups occurs digitally. Among the most common software are Ableton Live and Sony’s Acid Pro. They let both professionals and bedroom producers to join a vocal section from one piece with an instrumental section of another to produce one stereo track, which is the basic element of a mashup. Since at present music is recorded using multi-track recording techniques, music labels sometimes release those tracks individually to encourage producers and DJs to create remixes thus contributing to the popularity of the original recording. Works Cited Aram Sinnreich, â€Å"Plus ca change’ or Paradigm shift?† University of Massachusetts Press. (2010), 193-208. Brewster, Bill  and Broughton, Frank. Last night a dj saved my life: the history of the disc jockey. New York: Grove Press, 1999. Print. David J. Gunkel, â€Å"Rethinking the digital remix: Mash-ups and the metaphysics of sound recording.† Popular Music and Society, 31/4 (2008), 489-510. Gaylor, Brett, dir.  RIP: A Remix Manifesto. 2008. Web. 25 Jan. 2012 . Jackson, Michele. " The Mash-Up: A New Archetype for Communicatio."  Journal of Comupter-Mediated Communication. 14. (2009): 730–734. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.   Lamb, Brian. "Dr. Mashup or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix."EDUCAUSE Review. 2004. Web. 25 Jan. 2012. . McGranahan, Liam. "Bastards and Booties: Production, Copyright, and the Mashup Community."  Revista Transcultural de Musica. 14. 2010. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.   Remix A remix refers to alternative version of a recorded song with added or