How do laws, case law, and historical power relations influence the potential for the emergence of new musical forms? According to the thesis of this essay from Mel Stanfill, the copyright dispute over the song “Blurred Lines” (2013) from Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and Clifford Harris Jr., which an American court found to be a plagiarism of the song “Got to Give It Up” from Marvin Gaye from 1977 demonstrates that: The legal position is one side; case law, determined by subjective factors as well as historical conditions, is another. To article...
What does it sound like when trees communicate? In the Berlin premiere of Conference of Trees, Hendrik Weber aka Pantha du Prince transforms the scientifically proven cellular-biological communication of forests and trees into an audiovisual composition between avant-garde music and electronic club sounds, visual poetry and speculative science. In discussion with the philosopher Melanie Sehgal, he describes his working method, reveals his sources of inspiration in nature, shamanism and historical and contemporary literature, and explains how one can become a tree. To article in German...
Who benefits from ideas of ownership, control, and exploitation of music? And what could alternatives look like? The legal ethnographer and DJ Larisa Kingston Mann talks with Jan Kedves about Dub, dancehall traditions and sound systems, about collective authorship, oral tradition strategies, and the reproduction of colonial relationships in the global music industry. To article...
The history of the beat is a history of innovations in music technology and socio-historical developments. In the 18th and 19th centuries a square in New Orleans became a weekly meeting point for enslaved and liberated Africans, Americans, and Haitians. The musicologist Freddi Williams Evans on the historical appropriation of the site and its meaning for the emergence of Jazz. To article...
Neurons living in a Petri dish perform duets with human musicians: Australian-based artist Guy Ben-Ary had his cells extracted and grown into a culture of 100,000 living neurons. Lined with electrodes, these neurons form output via an analog synthesizer, cellF, allowing them to “jam” with human musicians. Ben-Ary talks about the blending of art and science, joint ventures, and non-human consciousness. To article...
The Mexican-American composer Conlon Nancarrow (1912–1997) lived in relative isolation in the suburbs of Mexico City, where he created an extremely innovate œuvre on a player piano. It was only at a late age that he gained international recognition with his scores that, to this day, are almost too complex for modern music technology. Some of his works will now be performed on an original player piano at the festival Free! Music. A rare treat. To article...
From “Freedom Now” to “White Zulu”: Writer Max Annas spent several years at the University of Fort Hare in East London, researching South African jazz. In this interview, he speaks about the political importance of jazz for the history of the country, from Freedom Now to White Zulu. To article in German...
In an interview with Max Dax, the curators of the HKW’s Free! Music Program, Detlef Diederichsen and Björn Gottstein, discuss their selection of music and its capacity to express liberational impulses – both musical and political. From the music of Conlon Nancarrow and Harry Partch – pioneers who freed compositional music from the restrictions of traditional instruments and tonality – to the musical freedom fighters under South Africa’s Apartheid regime, by way of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison concert, Free! Music explores the diverse experiences of “freedom, emancipation, delimitation, resistance, and protest” in music. To article in German...
Class, race, and Pop: How a marketing professional in the USA invented the racial division between “black” and “white” music. The musician Dom Flemons, himself affected by this pigeonhole thinking, speaks about a little known aspect of American Folk music. To article...
Whether it’s heavy metal or pop, doesn’t really matter: Tore Tvarnø Lind, music anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen, researches the methods of “modern” music torture. His work shows how, through structural violence and cruelty, music’s intended purpose is perverted and employed for human torture. An excerpt from his contribution to the newly published book “Krieg singen”. To article...
A new component of the Earth system is emerging today, comparable in scale and function to the bio- and hydrosphere: the Technosphere. It is being driven by the intertwining of natural environments with vast socio-technical forces and increasingly diverse technological species. The Technosphere X Knowledge event brought together scientists and artists in cross-disciplinary settings. In the aftermath of this encounter, the writer Adania Shibli reflects on the techniques and practices of knowing, sensing, and experiencing concurrently shaping the Technosphere. To article...
A conversation with the gramophone expert Ralf Schumacher about buried treasure and fascination with non-electric technology. To article in German...
From radio propaganda in Rwanda to torture in Guantanamo Bay, bloodshed accompanied by a soundtrack of reggae during the civil war in Sierra Leone to the calls to battle of the Marseillaise: What does music have to do with war? The cultural anthropologist Angela Dreßler explores this question, and in the process discovers how music is supposed to put fears of another military putsch to rest in war-torn Guinea-Bissau. To article in German...
The connections between war and music are as diverse as they are many. One hundred years after the First World War, the festival program of Singing the War looks at the manifestations of these relationships since then, from technologies developed for use in war that would later take on a central role in music (radio, the loudspeaker, recording, etc.) to music as war propaganda, as a form of resistance, as a means of processing, etc. Singing the War draws an arc over the century to draw attention to just how close war is to Europe today. A Discussion with Bernd Scherer and the curators of the festival Detlef Diederichsen and Holger Schulze. To article...
The German version of this interview first appeared in September 2015 in a supplement issued with the newspaper taz for 100 Years of Now. On October 3, F.S.K. performed Ein Haufen Scheiss und ein zertrümmertes Klavier as part of the opening of 100 Years of Now. A multimedia documentation of the event can be found in the HKW Mediathek. The accompanying volume Krieg Singen is part of the book series 100 Years of Now Library. To article in German...
It is in the experiment that we are closest to time’s traces, and time can always, only be grasped up to a point. In Time’s Attack on the Rest of Life, a diverse palate of artists and scholars such as molecular biologist and science historian Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, composer Sandeep Bhagwati, and installation artists Evelina Domnitch and Dimitry Gelfland reflected on the constant shifting and multiplicities of the shaping of time in the context of the opening of 100 Years of Now. To article in German...
