2011/2/24

聽入與聽出---我的搖滾樂之旅 （鍾永豐）

如果你年過二十還沒聽入搖滾樂，我不再覺得有何遺憾可言，畢竟現下社會提供更多樣開放的人生選擇。但對於青年時期身心受制但又處心積慮想頂幾句想回幾拳如我輩年過四十者，很難不從某些搖滾樂中聽見那些聳動誘人的招喚。然在我們這個從政治經濟到社會文化全面受美式資本主義、現代主義與個人主義強勢貫穿的半邊陲國度，聽搖滾樂、迷搖滾樂、追踪搖滾樂而能不變成形式主義買辦或孤絕自封的菁英，或能不亢地迎接外來文化、不卑地看待在地的文化生態，我必須承認，這不是簡單的事。即使我們矢志超脫被殖民的局勢，在認識上我們往往陷入二分法的魔障，在實踐上我們又很難不落入眼高手低的窘境。我們年輕在容易聽入搖滾樂的年代，但卻活在不易聽出搖滾樂的社會；這是我輩的幸與不幸。

一九八六年某個冬夜，即將被三二踢出成大前，我一遍又一遍地聽許常惠編輯的「賴碧霞的客家民謠」（請容我充滿敬意與謝意地備註：中國民俗音樂專集，第十四輯，第一唱片廠有限公司）。每當賴女士唱到最「黑」的老山歌曲調，我總覺得淚腺溯源至心臟。但那些湧出的淚水不止關於遙遠的童年記憶，還混雜著悔悟：「幹！這就是藍調呀！」正如同藍調乃關乎被壓迫的勞動黑人，老山歌之於我先是勞動者，然後才是客家。只是--勞苦的客家祖先啊，真失禮喲，不肖子弟是聽了幾百張六、七○年代的盜版搖滾樂唱片後，經高人指點才知道搖滾樂的根源在藍調後，又聽了十幾張的Lightnin’ Hopkins、Robert Johnson、Robert Pete Williams、Muddy Waters、Leadbelly、Son House、Blind Lemon Jefferson、Big Mama Thornton後才翻醒：哦！原來你們也在唱藍調呀！

雖然祖先傳下的山歌不吐嘈、不抗議，缺乏刺入骨的反諷與幽默，但這不防礙我天真地推測：凡是被壓抑勞動者的音樂都具備藍調的某些特性，或者，其實「藍調」可以理解為勞動者音樂的某些普同性。再回過頭來看待六○年代的白人藍調搖滾樂團（比如Rolling Stones、Fleetwood Mac、Ten Years After等），即使他們一貫矯情或出於商業投機地把藍調形式化與白人化，也算是向主流社會吐舌頭或倒味口，同時為起源於五○年代、燎原於六○年代的反向文化運動添薪加柴。但六○年代的搖滾樂運動不僅向邊緣取用文化形式，也朝底層向工會運動挪借抗爭文化，足堪代表者便是Bob Dylan。他不僅延伸並復興了老左派的工運民謠，六四年所出版的The Times They Are A-Changin’專輯更將美國工會的本位主義推向國際主義的高度（請聽North Country Blues），並在這樣的高度上批判了白人的帝國主義意識型態（請聽With God on Our Side）。

但文本意義的激進，尚不足以說明Bob Dylan帶給民謠美學的劃時代影響。我甚至認為，其影響直可比擬布萊希特（Bertolt Brecht）的疏離劇場為現代戲劇帶來的衝擊。六四年以後，老左派與純粹民謠論者咬定掄起電吉他的Bob Dylan背叛民謠運動。但真要對他的「背叛」追根究底，電吉他絕非重點。從首張專輯開始，他就與民謠傳統分道揚鑣了。

我認為重要的分野有三。第一，他高突了民謠創作與演唱的作者論地位，背離了左派民謠中强調與人民合音合調的民粹主義。第二，他脫離了民謠傳統中的兩個基本美學：田園式的快樂主義與高貴的憂傷主義；他的方法與布萊希特用以使傳統戲劇發生質變的疏離美學，在方法論的意義上正屬同一性質（請聽首張專輯中的Man of Constant Sorrow與 House of the Rising Sun，那憂傷與憤怒是前所未有地冷酷）。第三，在疏離美學的作用下，他的批判現實主義作品把左派場域中等待感動與煽動的被動聽眾易轉為冷靜的辯證思考者。容我大膽地說：正是這三個基本的「背離」，不僅使得Bob Dylan的某些民謠作品具備了能與現代社會深刻對話的「當代性」，甚至放在後來的時代中，都歷久彌新深具「前衛性」。

布萊希特的創作與理論在1940年代的歐洲左派文藝陣營中，激起了廣泛的表現主義論爭，而60年代的美國左派卻只計較Bob Dylan的電吉他正當性，沒能在方法論上探究現代民謠的發展問題，後知之明地看來，不無遺憾。（未完）

Potlatch Digital: A Perspective on the Future Economy of Music (Jacques Attali)

I wrote »Noise« in 1977, and still today I try to explain that it’s impossible to look at music, or any other form of human endeavour, when you put it outside of the global context. Of course, music is very specific for a number of reasons. One economic reason is that music is pure information. In economies, information is a devil – it’s impossible to manage. For example, the whole of economic theory is the theory of scarce resources. If milk is freely available, then the price of milk is down; if milk is scarce, the price is up: this is economic theory. But it doesn’t work for music: it doesn’t work for information as a whole. If I had a pot of milk, and I give it to you, I don’t have it anymore. But if I give you a piece of information I still have it, I keep it. Which means that if I have something and I give it to you, I create something new: abundance. And this means that economic theory doesn’t work for information, when that information can be separated from its material support – a CD, or whatever is the case today.

When I have something that is scarce, its value is linked to the fact that it is scarce, and that it belongs to me and nobody else. In an information economy, something has more value when a lot of people have it. For example, if I am the only one to have a telephone, it doesn’t mean anything, not if there is no one else to call. If I am the only person to speak a particular language, its value is zero, because I cannot speak to anyone else. In info theory, the value of something increases with the number of people sharing it. It’s why we must be very careful, when we speak about music, not to have in mind the main economic laws.

But there are also other reasons why we cannot rely on economics to understand music. Every human activity has a history, and it is a history that existed before economics, when things had a value that was not a price. So if you want to understand something’s value, you must try to understand what its value was before it was given a price. This is true for everything. It is only when you have found what is the value, what is the role, what is the function of something before it had a price that you understand why it can be considered to have a value in economics, why it still has a value even today.

What is the value of music in precapitalist society? In my view, music is a metaphor for the management of violence. When people listen to music, they listen to the fact that society is possible: because we can manage violence. If violence is not managed, then society collapses. The only way for individuals to survive is for violence to be channelled or tamed. In anthropology, it can be explained that the best way to manage violence requires us to accept the two following hypothesis.

One: We are violent only when we have the same kinds of desire as the other person, and we become rivals. Two: The way to manage violence in society is to organise differences – not inequalities – between people, in order that they do not desire the same thing, and through the channelling of violence by the creation of scapegoats. Scapegoats are a crucial element in the organisation of a society. They are somebody or something which must be hated, and also admired. Without them society is impossible, because violence is everywhere.

What’s the relationship between that and music? If you look at music as a way of organising differences among noises, then you have music as a metaphor for the organising of scapegoats. Noise is violence, it is killing. Organising noises, creating differences in noises, is a way of demonstrating that violence can be transformed into a way of managing violence. And this is true everywhere. In thousands of myths there are relations between violence and noise; music and peace; musicians and scapegoats; music and relationship to gods; dance and religious ceremony. In every case they present the same thing: trying to find a way to organise possible life in society.

Music is prophetic. Why? If we consider music to be a kind of code, we can see that there are many different ways of organising that code: different melodies, different rhythms, different genres. Moreover, we can explore these different forms of organisation much more easily, much more rapidly, than we can explore different ways of organising reality.

Music is just one element in the management of violence, and there are different stages in this. The first and longest stage in the history of mankind was through religion. We may say it began at least 15,000 years ago. Music didn’t exist as an art – for art didn’t exist. Music, dance, prayer, daily life were exactly the same; everything was alive, everything had a spiritual dimension. In this world, music was an expression of God, as well as a way to speak to God. It’s what I call music linked to sacrifice or ritual.

The Bible is the first sacred book in which music is said not to come from gods, but having been invented by men. It is presented as a human way of managing violence, and from Babylon to Egypt, the Greek and Roman and Chinese empires, we see the appropriation of »sacred« or »holy« powers by emperors, that is, by men. It is the beginning of division of labour, particularly between the three main powers – religion, the arts and the military – in which each plays a role in the management of violence. Music is the beginning to become increasingly important in this management process, and remains so right through the Middle Ages.

The real change occurred when a new means of managing violence appears: money. There was another way of managing violence, and another way of managing violence through music. More people wanted to be part of society, so it became impossible to tame violence through the old model. Where an »elite« form of music existed, it was in the courts, in the company of the king. But then a new group of money managers emerged in the form of the middle classes, the bourgeoisie, the shopkeepers. They wanted to access to music but were too numerous and not in a position to finance musicians full time. Thus emerged the public performance. What’s interesting is that not only does this begin to organise music economically – people would put on a concert and others would buy tickets – but that new stiles and new instruments begin to have an aesthetic impact, such as the symphony and the sonata. This is what I see as a period characterised by representation. All this is linked to the fact that there is an increased number of patrons for whom the musician can work, but also because music was being used as a representation of power. Patrons were there to show one another that they are the new elite, that they are powerful.

This developed through the 18th and 19th centuries, and then you have a whole new form of music appearing, linked to the need of developing a representational economy , leading not just to stars – individuals – but to large orchestras of 50 to 100 people… and ultimately the conductor. What is the conductor? He is someone who tames the orchestra, but also someone who is demonstrating to the audience that it is possible to tame the orchestra – we see one of us taming the workers, organising the division of labour, avoiding violence and creating harmony.

At the end of the 19th century, as the burgeoning middle classes began to consolidate their position within society, it was not enough for music to be confined to the concert hall – it had become impossible to give access for music to all those that wanted it. By the way, it is here that music begins to develop an economic value in the form of copyright. What is important to understand is that copyright is not property right. Copyright is given during the lifetime of the musician, and to some extent, that of their children – it’s limited. This means that music has never been accepted as being the property of the musician. Copyright exists to finance his life, but not as property in itself, such as a car. So, to continue: at the end of the 19th century, it was necessary to create another way of organising music, in order to allow more people access to that music. It was time to invent the gramophone. The gramophone was needed because it was impossible to build enough concert houses for the hundreds of thousands of people who were in a position to buy music.

There was a need to create a means of having a private concert, because this was the only way to accommodate all those in a financial position to access music. Actually, there were two ways, which would go on to influence one another throughout the 20th century. Firstly, there was the gramophone – the concert without limit. And secondly there was the radio, which would pose exactly the same problems as the Internet does today, in that it offered free music.

Thus began what I see as the third stage after ritual and representation – namely repetition, beginning at the end of the 19th century. What is interesting here is that music begins to be seen as something that can be stored, and then copied and copied and copied. The gramophone exists before television, before the car industry, before you have a society characterised by mass consumption. Once again, music was a prophecy, not only in the technological terms that facilitated the production of more music for more people, but also, once again, in terms of style. One of the first styles to emerge in this new era was jazz, which is itself predicated on repetition. And after that, of course, the whole »scientific« or »theoretical« approach to music, also characterised by repetition, that was taken by people like Stravinsky, Ravel, Boulez, Stockhausen, Reich and Glass. It was a way of reproducing stylistically what was happening technologically. Today, the music industry faces yet another problem, in that there are limits to the amount of music that they can sell to people. Why? Because there are physical limits to the amount of music that people can store at home, even if you miniaturise the sales format – CD, DVD, or whatever. It’s simply too much, it takes too much space. There is an economic need to facilitate greater storage within a smaller physical space. What is required is a kind of »virtual music«.

I think we may be entering a fourth era, one which will not replace repetition, just as repetition did not replace representation, and representation ritual. For instance, we still attend the types of concert that emerged during the representational period. There are a number of points to consider here. Firstly, when people talk about »pirates«, we should remember that the music industry is the biggest pirate of all, and has been from the very beginning. Who created the possibility of duplicating and distributing music, if not the record industry itself? You will find the same thing happening at each stage of the technology’s evolutionary development – the record industry shoots itself in the foot. One arm is producing music and complaining that technology is making it easier to steal that music, while the other arm is producing the very technology that it claims to be damaging its interests. This was true for cassettes, this was true for CDs, and it is true again for the Internet. Napster is of marginal importance here. Gnutella or Aimster were born within the industry. Both came out of AOL and they escaped like a virus that escapes a laboratory. They try to prevent it, but they can’t.

The second point to bear in mind is that we must make distinctions between three different types of copying. If I copy something for my own personal use, it is not illegal. Secondly, if I make a copy to give as a gift to another person, that too is not illegal, and this right is upheld across any number of formats, from CD to cassette to DVD. Interestingly, legislation exists that attempts to make it illegal, for the first time in mankind’s history, for me to make such a gift over the Internet… which means that it will not work. The third type of copying, namely the mass duplication of music for sale or profit, is clearly illegal.

But there are roughly one billion MP3 files in circulation on the Internet, and this figure increases by around 100 million each month. The question is whether it is possible to tame this kind of thing, whether it is possible to put the genie back in the bottle. In answer to this, I propose three scenarios. Two scenarios see us remain in a repetitive era, in which we try to treat digital file formats as if they were physical commodities. In one of these, the majors win. They would have to rely on effective cryptography to prevent duplication of music; also necessary would be the destruction of all MP3 files or, at the very least, control over the production of the devices that play digital file formats. This is rather similar to the approach taken by the industry when trying to shift consumers from vinyl records to CD. So it is possible that the industry will begin to produce devices that are incompatible with the MP3 format. This is certainly the approach that the industry is taking at the moment, but to my mind this will not work. It would require legislative support, and it would need to be policed worldwide. It would have to install a system for monitoring email traffic on a global scale, to ensure that no MP3 files were being sent or received. Moreover, it would probably require the industry to control what kind of music was played in a live concert or rave party, or what have you. Most significantly, any monitoring system would inevitably be used not just to check for signs of illegal music, but for wider surveillance as well. My bet is that such a system will not work. But if it does, music will be a prophecy of nothing less than a future totalitarian society.

The second scenario is one in which the majors are not in a position to do it, but where artists will want to do it and will do it. Artists will say, »I don’t want to be rewarded only for selling the T-shirt«. There will be a fight – Courtney Love is famous for that – but I think a lot of artists would fight against the majors and try to organise the selling of their own music. I think this has a chance to work for the major artist, for the specialised artist, but this is not going to help the main global thing.

The third thing, which, one of three, I think has the best chance of succeeding, is what I would call the »potlatch scenario«, where people will exchange music just for the pleasure of actually giving. This is, of course, how MP3.com originally started, where people posted their music as amateurs, not as professionals. There are two directions in which this scenario could develop. Firstly, if repetition proves to be enough to tame music, we might witness the emergence of what has been called »cultural capitalism«. And as I have said, information does not conform to normal economic rules that rely on scarcity.

But technology can be used to create artificial scarcity, so that cultural goods can be bought and sold like any other commodity. At the same time, one way of utilising actual scarcity might be to maintain a focus on live entertainment. If I look at the final of a soccer world championship, it is an entirely different experience to watch it live than it is to watch it two hours later, when you already know the result. You don’t need any technology in order to be able to sell a live event, because the value lies in the fact that you absolutely cannot know how it will end. A live concert in many ways is not a live event, because you have an idea of what is going to happen – unless it is totally improvised. So we can imagine cultural capitalism emphasising live events which are either totally improvised, or for which a conclusion cannot be forecast.

However, if I am correct when I say that repetition will not be enough to tame music in the future, a fourth stage in the evolution of music may emerge, which I call »composition«. The future is no longer to listen to music, but to play it. It is different from everything that I have mentioned before. As a theorist, I have to say that composition would be done first and foremost for ourselves, for each of us, for the simple pleasure of making music. This is significant not only because you do it outside of the economy, for your own personal enjoyment, but because the only person listening to the piece is the same person playing it. It lies primarily outside of communication. And, stylistically, this is important because, as any musician will tell you, what you like to play is often not the same as what we like to listen to.

The tools of composition will be tools that are linked to the body: prostheses. Certainly we can use sexual metaphors here: the first characteristic of composition would be masturbatory. Of course, this would be just one element of the compositional act, followed closely by the need to share with another. It says in the Bible: »You should love others as you do yourself.« I have always understood this to mean that it is impossible to like others if you don’t like yourself first. Of course, the market economy may try to distort composition, to reorganise it in its own image. For example, I am fascinated by the recent work of Paul Allen. As a fan of Jimi Hendrix, he has created a museum in Seattle in which you can simulate the sensation of appearing as Jimi Hendrix live on stage, complete with applause at the end. I am sure this is going to develop as a kind of market-led recreation of composition, where you will simulate being an artist with a simulated audience. Nevertheless, the real pleasure of composition would exist outside of the market economy, just for the fun of it, where violence is rechannelled through creation. For when I create something, and I then give it to you, I may have a chance of living in your memory forever.