Harold López-Nussa (left) at Old Town School of Folk Music. 3 Nov. 2021.
Playlist on YouTube
Section I: The Adaption of Music to Global Digital Environments
1. “Gambia x Senegal,” Daniel Jatta, Single, 2011, West Africa, Akonting. YouTube, youtu.be/lzt0v9roU6g.
2. “El Mariachi Loco,” Mariachi Fiesta USA, Single, 2019, Mexico, Mariachi. YouTube, youtu.be/XxBAwr_FkoQ.
3. “Ellen/Oprah,” Adam Neely, Jessica Kion, and Ben Levin, Single, Adam Neely, 2019, United States, Ethno-Chillhop. YouTube, youtu.be/OgSESWL8H2I.
Section II: The Adaption of Music to Global Capitalist Markets
4. “Lila’s Mambo,” Harold López-Nussa, Te Lo Dije, track 4, Mack Avenue Records II, 2020, Cuba, Mambo-Jazz Fusion. YouTube, youtu.be/KmtcT4Zfkb0.
5. “Rumba Plenazo,” Plenealo, Distinto y Diferente, track 3, Plenealo Music, 2008, Puerto Rico, Plena. YouTube, youtu.be/0yjBPzXP3Nc.
6. “Myara Drum Circle,” Amrut Bhatt, Single, 2021, India, Facilitated Drum Circle. YouTube, youtu.be/tVGchm3wjGI.
7. “Amour T’es Là,” Snarky Puppy and Magda Giannikou, Family Dinner, Vol. 1, track 4, GroundUP Music, 2013, United States, French Jazz. YouTube, youtu.be/JFkRtjrrM5k.
Section III: The Adaptation of Music for Opportunity and for Necessity
8. “Muziky Muziky Polka,” Brian and the Mississippi Valley Dutchmen, Deeper Polka: More Dance Music from the Midwest, track 20, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2002, United States, Bohemian Polka. YouTube, youtu.be/uKNeDQ1UibI.
9. “Claudia hat ‘nen Schäferhund,” Die Ärzte, Debil, track 7, 1984, Germany, Fun Punk. YouTube, youtu.be/rDEvucnEDBo.
10. “Castaways,” Adam Neely, Martina DaSilva, and Rotem Sivan, Single, Adam Neely, 2021, United States, Bossa Nova. YouTube, youtu.be/Bo5B_2cw2Wo.
Change Driven by Adaptations of Music
How often have kids of today’s generation had to listen to their parents or grandparents complain about their choice in music? Listening to Olivia Rodrigo and dancing to TikTok songs is pointless after all, especially which so much “better” music to listen to. But it was the same story a century ago, with the youth being criticized for following Duke Ellington and dancing to those fast-paced jazz tunes (truly, how dare they?). It is easy to find and to joke about these sorts of occurrences, and it is equally easy to consider them with respect to more serious topics, such as hypocrisy or resistance to change. Regardless, while there will always be disagreement between generations with respect to changing musical preferences, it is an in-depth examination of changes in music over time which prompts the questions of why and how music and music tastes change in the first place.
I have created and formatted my playlist and this essay in an attempt to begin answering these questions. It is my belief that adaptations of music to various arising technologies or socio-cultural contexts are what drive changes in music over time. In particular, I believe that music adapts to best suit the time period and cultural framework within which it exists. I seek to exemplify this through a select few case studies in music, which I have split across three sections. Section I consists of three songs and explores music in a currently developing digital environment. Section II consists of four songs and explores music in the more established framework of capitalist markets. Section III consists of three songs and takes a step back to examine other ways in which music adapts, identifying and examining the driving forces behind transformations of music and of music genres.
Section I: The Adaption of Music to Global Digital Environments
Online environments have been a recent development in history. One of the largest and most popular digital platforms is YouTube, which allows people of almost any background (provided internet access) to record and upload videos for anyone online to see. Its versatility extends to music, where content creators showcase personal or niche music, reimagine popular music, and generate new hybrid music in a way unique to online platforms.
1. Daniel Jatta provides an example of a basic use of YouTube with his performance of “Gambia x Senegal.” The unedited video was shot in a friend’s backyard in Florida featuring only the song and its background. Viewers learn that the song was composed by Jatta’s father and talks about how the Jola of modern-day Gambia and Senegal should view themselves as one united people. Jatta uses YouTube as a tool to share a personal story and to spread a message of unity to a target audience in West Africa, but which is also broadcast to people across the world.
2. Other musicians use YouTube as a tool to personalize their music and customize their performance in the way that only digital environments allow. With so many other groups performing popular songs (such as “El Mariachi Loco”), Mariachi Fiesta USA embellishes their performance using separate video and audio tracks, utilizes video editing to showcase the individual musicians in their group, and personalizes the video through music and dance. This type of performance is less concerned with musicality and more concerned with feats of performance.
3. Digital platforms also facilitate complex works of music, providing opportunity through connectivity. One such example is with the song “Ellen/Oprah,” by Adam Neely and Ben Levin, and featuring other YouTubers. The musicians here are all independent artists and content creators who may never have interacted without YouTube. Yet they collaboratively produced this song featuring everything from lyrics referencing American pop-culture figures to the sounds produced by a Japanese shakuhachi. It is a unique and genre-defying hybridization of music, made possible thanks to YouTube, as it provides a far-reaching and accessible online platform for content creation and discovery, allowing collaboration across cities, countries, and continents.
Section II: The Adaption of Music to Global Capitalist Markets
Another more established environment for music is generated by large, competitive markets. For music to survive in these markets it is necessarily commodified, which requires differentiation, advertisement, endorsement, and so forth, whether for the benefit or the detriment of the artist, merchandise, or the music itself. Yet unlike with digital mediums, music has existed within the framework of global markets for longer, and has had more opportunities to adapt.
4. An obvious example is found in how artists sell themselves. Harold López-Nussa advertises himself as a pianist from Cuba, using distance as a selling point of authenticity [1]. Further, his song “Lila’s Mambo” (Lila being his nickname for his daughter) uses familial relationships to generate authenticity, appealing to his audience’s emotional connections to their own families with a song written for his daughter.
5. As opposed to the artist as a product, products are often sold with music, and particularly with festivals. “Rumba Plenazo” by Plenealo is an example of the music heard during Puerto Rico’s SanSe festival. This festival is born of religious celebration (of San Sebastían), but like many, it is commodified and redesigned for consumption [2]: by artisans on the street selling merchandise, sponsorships from alcohol brands, and its proclivity to attract tourists.
6. Then exists the notion of music as a product itself. The video “Myara Drum Circle” is an example of, and an advertisement for, the brand of music in which Amrut Bhat specializes: drum circle events. Referring to himself as a “drum circle facilitator,” Bhat sells his product, musical therapy, through videos like these, showing how his music functions as a rejuvenating, team-bonding exercise of sorts. He often performs at weddings and at corporate events.
7. Contrary to the above examples, some musicians with an existing and significant presence, such as Snarky Puppy, use the necessitated commodification of music for the benefit of others. Their song “Amour T’es Là,” as one example, was part of their album Family Dinner, where a portion of its sales went to the Jefferson Center Music Lab, a non-profit youth arts center in Roanoke. Interestingly, Snarky Puppy also benefits from charity and fundraising of this sort, as it generates an ethical authenticity which resonates with their audience.
Section III: The Adaptation of Music for Opportunity and for Necessity
Thus far we have seen cases where music has been actively adapted for various environments. Some cases have simply been due to opportunity, such as with YouTube, where music performance is allowed personalization and collaboration. Other cases have been out of necessity, such as with capitalist markets, where music struggles at times to thrive. In this section I would like to examine other forms of opportunity and necessity driving musical adaptation.
8. Polka is a genre which has its origins in a Bohemian style of dance. Polka’s conception as a music form coincided with a wave of immigration from Europe to the United States, along with the invention of instruments such as the accordion, as well as the popularity of brass bands at the time. Styles of polka came to reflect the national heritages of the people performing it. With Bohemian polka, this happened with the adaptation of Czech marches and traditional dancing songs to the developing free reed and brass instrument ensembles, one such example being the march “Muziky, Muziky” being performed as “Muziky Muziky Polka” by the modern-day group Brian and the Mississippi Valley Dutchmen. Polka gained popularity with the invention of the phonograph, which made music of smaller ethnic groups more accessible, and with the adoption of other styles of North American music into polka, such as jazz [3].
9. Punk is a subculture which is concerned with free expression of personal or political ideologies and is primarily characterized by anti-establishment sentiments. In the case of Mexican punk artists, punk music is a means of expressing shared political thoughts and concerns in an environment which facilitates “collective catharsis” [4]. Punk as a form of protest in other countries has plateaued in the past, forcing existing artists to adapt and modify their method of protest. In Germany, Die Ärzte helped pioneer the subgenre of “fun punk,” which was considered both humorous and palatable. By releasing non-political songs using controversial topics as humor (such as “Claudia hat ‘nen Schäferhund,” with a punchline of zoophilia), they indirectly challenged censorship by being censored themselves. This garnered them a reputation, allowing them to profit even so.
10. As a collection of topics discussed in this essay is Adam Neely’s rendition of “Castaways.” The song comes from a cartoon: The Backyardigans, and was written with homage to Brazilian samba. “Castaways” gained popularity in 2021 on the online platform TikTok, where users imitated the dance as seen in the cartoon. This sparked a series of memes and other videos which used the song’s lyrics as a punchline. Neely used its popularity to create a video essay on YouTube discussing the composition and history of the song. Through this he was able to educate others on a topic which is important to him, and he was also able to promote his own collaborative and hybrid cover of the song, which had its own video on YouTube. Both videos were heavily edited and monetizable, meaning he was able to collect revenue from advertisements in his videos. Neely utilized digital tools and platforms to sell his content and his music by closely following and complying with modern trends in internet culture.
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Samuel Martínez Koss is a second year student at the University of Chicago majoring in Statistics and minoring in Germanic Studies. He has been practicing music since the age of five and actively plays trombone in the University Wind Ensemble and the Dirt Red Brass Band. He is a self-taught composer and pianist, and enjoys dabbling in a variety of other instruments, such as trumpet, accordion, mandolin, and ocarina.
References
[1] van Klyton, Aaron. 2016. “All the Way from… Authenticity and Distance in World Music Production.” Cultural Studies 30, no.1: 106–28.
[2] Taylor, Timothy D. 2017. “World Music Festivals as Spectacles of Genrefication and Diversity.” Chapter 6 in Music in the World: Selected Essays, University of Chicago Press, pp. 114–26.
[3] March, Richard. 2012. “Polka.” Grove Music Online. Accessed 10 Dec. 2021. https://www-oxfordmusiconline-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002225372.
[4] Tatro, Kelley. 2014. “The Hard Work of Screaming: Physical Exertion and Affective Labor among Mexico City’s Punk Vocalists.” Ethnomusicology 58, no.3: 431–53.