Parliament – Mr. Wiggles

There is something inherently misleading about the word ‘revolution’. While the term suggests a change of astronomical proportions, these colossal expectations are hardly ever met. That does not mean that revolutions did, do, or will not happen at all; they simply come in unexpected shapes, forms, colors, and sizes. The revolution that I will discuss in the following, for instance, is tiny. Still, even this assessment of its size is not accurate enough. In this particular case, visual metaphors are wrong altogether. Neither a telescope nor a microscope will help a single bit to observe it. This revolution cannot be seen at all.

Resorting to other sensory metaphors, sonic ones for instance, does not help much either. While we expect a revolution to come with a big bang, these loud sounds are hardly ever heard. As a matter of fact, the revolution that I will discuss in this essay was so silent that at the time of its occurrence it could hardly be heard at all. Ironically, this major breakthrough almost got lost amongst the plethora of sounds and noises that surrounded it. Listening back, it is still impossible to hear this revolution directly. Raising the volume does not help either, since it would only amplify the background noises. This strange revolution started neither with a whisper nor a scream but occurred somewhere in-between these other sounds, in a realm that is neither visual nor acoustic.

At this point, I will shift from the word ‘revolution’ to a revolution. The event that I would like to denominate as such is James Brown’s introduction of ‘the One’ into popular music. While this term initially designated the first beat of a measure, its meaning in funk music can no longer be reduced to its original use. In this essay, I will try to explain what James Brown and his successors – Sly Stone, George Clinton, Betty Davis, Bootsy Collins, Rick James, and Prince to name a few – actually mean when they use this enigmatic term, and argue that the One was nothing less than a twofold revolution in soul, pop, and rock music. First, the One released rhythm from its secondary and instrumental role to melody and harmony. Second, and more importantly, this revolution emancipated rhythm from its musical, and even its auditory constraints. After James Brown’s intervention, rhythm is no longer exclusively connected to the ear – or any other sense for that matter – but becomes an interplay between multiple types of sensory data.

Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag

“The James Brown sound I didn’t learn from nobody. It’s from me“
“I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know”

– James Brown

At first sight, Brown’s major breakthrough seems to be restricted to a miniscule intervention. On “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” (1965), the singer broke with the conventions of the popular music of his time. Instead of emphasizing the second and fourth beat of every measure, Brown accentuated the first and the third. In the singer’s own words:

“I changed from the upbeat to the downbeat. Simple as that really.” (Brown qtd. in Pareles)

Simple as it may have been, it is very difficult to precisely determine – let alone explain – what James Brown did. In spite of the singer’s own beliefs, for one, the answer cannot be found in the downbeat itself. In fact, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” is far from its first or most exemplary occurrence in music history. At best, the song marks a break with the conventions of the soul and pop music of its time. Not nearly enough to call this song a revolution, or so it seems at least.

Let’s shift back to the concept of ‘revolution’ then: if this term proves to be so ambiguous and problematic, why not avoid it altogether? Within the context of this essay, my answer would be that etymologically the concept precisely combines the two contradictory movements that I need in order to call “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” a revolution. In her book On Revolution (1963) Hannah Arendt points out that the term has its origin in 16th century astronomy, and that its literal meaning in that discipline is – at least at first sight – the exact opposite of its metaphorical use in philosophy and politics. ‘Revolution’ does not refer to the men-ignited process that leads to a radical new order in history, but to the eternally recurring cyclical motion of the stars; an unstoppable, natural force radically outside the reach of human agency.

“While the elements of novelty, beginning, and violence, all intimately associated with our notion of revolution, are conspicuously absent from the original meaning of the word as well as from its first metaphoric use in political language, there exists another connotation of the astronomic term which I have already mentioned briefly and which has remained very forceful in our own use of the word. I mean the notion of irresistibility, the fact that the revolving motion of the stars follow a preordained path and is removed from all influence of human power.” (Arendt 47)

Arendt distinguishes between two aspects of astronomical revolutions: irresistibility and cyclicality. In the contemporary, philosophical or political use of the term, the stress clearly lies on the first of these two terms, whereas the second seems to have disappeared. Still, it believe that it is a mistake to think that the moment of a radical new beginning has completely replaced the cyclical aspect of a revolution. While novelty may appear to be irreconcilable with the idea of an eternally recurring cycle, I will argue that it is not. In order to show that, however, it is necessary to make a further distinction within the concept of cyclicality itself.

A cyclical movement is more complex than it initially may seem to be; twice as complex to be precise. From a theoretical perspective, a cycle is not a single but a twofold motion. Two elements are necessary to define a cyclical movement: it has to consist of both a radical change as well a return. In order to distinguish a cycle from mere movement, both of these aspects need to be present. Neither one of them can be more important than the other. The fact of the return does not reduce the change to a mere surface effect, nor does the radical nature of the change relativize the return.

Invisible Man, the title of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel refers to the lack of opacity of its main protagonist. Rather than reading this book as the exemplary story of a concrete, situated individual – an African-American intellectual before and during the so-called Harlem Renaissance – this article-in-progress will concentrate on the figure of thought that this central character expresses.

The Invisible Man’s most striking feature is his ongoing struggle for social and medial recognition.

“You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful.” (Ellison, 7)

In fact, as a conceptual persona, the Invisible Man is the element that is unrecognized by dominant discourse.

The flip side of the Invisible Man’s transparency is his extreme adaptability. In Ellison’s novel, the main character goes through several metamorphoses: he starts as a naive country boy who subsequently becomes an uppity student, a factory worker, a civil right activist, a preacher, a pimp, until he finally realizes that he is in fact defined by an inherent absence of a positive identity.

“So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.” (Ellison, 462)

The main protagonist of Invisible Man is a conceptual persona that cannot be positively recognized within discourse. He does not appear to have any other intrinsic features but negativity and arbitrariness. Following this line of argumentation, one could argue that the function of the Invisible Man in discourse is comparable to that Jacques Derrida’s différance in texts; an irreducible absence that precedes and obstructs any kind of meaning.

As opposed to différance, however, the absence of the Invisible Man is only apparent. Even though the main protagonist is excluded from all forms of discursive representation, this bare fact itself already presupposes his existence. As such, his invisibility is a modified form of presence rather than an absolute lack. The few remainders of this persona’s presence in discourse can therefore be creatively transformed into something different and expressed in another medium. The narrator of Invisible Man discovers the emancipatory potential of adaptation while listening to a jazz record.

“Perhaps I like Louis Armstrong because he’s made poetry out of being invisible. I think it must be because he’s unaware that he is invisible. And my own grasp of invisibility aids me to understand his music.” (Ellison, 11)

It is the medial translation from the (in)visible to the audible – from texts and images to sounds and music – that can be interpreted as a solution to the problem of recognition in Ellison’s novel. The process of adaptation has the power to render the unseen heard (and the unheard seen).

“So under the spell of the reefer I discovered a new analytical way of listening to music. The unheard sounds came through, and each melodic line existed of itself, stood clearly from all the rest, said its piece, and waited patiently for the other voices to speak. That night I found myself hearing not only in time, but in space as well. I not only entered the music but descended, like Dante, into its depths.” (Ellison, 11)

Louis Armstrong’s adaptation of transparency into jazz makes apparent that the Invisible Man is not really an empty, arbitrary position in discourse but an unrecognized space that is actually filled with potential meaning. Through his descent into the depths of music, the Invisible Man discovers that by postulating presence/absence as an absolute and fundamental dichotomy this promise is actually overlooked. There is never complete absence, because even at empty spaces there is still materiality. As a matter of fact, it is the medium that by definition resists absolute negation.

In a perverse way, this analysis of Armstrong’s music actually corresponds with Theodor W. Adorno’s critique of jazz. In his 1935 essay ‘On Jazz’, the philosopher devalues the often praised dissonance and syncopation in this musical genre as deceptive. As opposed to the a-metrical and atonal elements in the music of Arnold Schönberg and Alban Berg – Adorno’s composers of choice – jazz just offers irregular modifications of meter and harmony. These are not just formal difference, since Adorno believes that music transcends its aesthetic meaning. He conceives the underlying rigid metric and harmonic structure of jazz as significant manifestations of an omnipresent logic of a dominant discourse (In Adorno’s words, culture industry/global capitalism). Although jazz at first seem to break with this hegemonic system, it actually confirms it. In other words, to Adorno jazz fails to be a real negation because the structure prevents it.

Pluralizing Rhythm: Music, Art, Politics

Editors: Jan Hein Hoogstad and Birgitte Stougaard
Book Series: Thamyris / Intersecting: Place, Sex, and Race
Publisher: Rodopi (Amsterdam / New York)
Series Editor: Ernst van Alphen
Expected Publication: Fall 2009

This volume wishes to draw attention to the concept of rhythm as a tool in analyzing cultural objects.

In fields as diverse as music, culture, nature, and economy, rhythm can be seen as a phenomenon that simultaneously connects and divides. It suggests a certain measure with which people, practices and cultures can comply. Yet, for this very reason rhythm can also function as a field of exclusion, contestation and debate. In that sense rhythm possesses an underestimated meaning-creating potential.Whereas its connecting force is often accentuated in the aesthetic, political, and commercial usage of the term, the divisive aspect of rhythm is at least as important.

pluralizing rhythm wants to rid rhythm of its harmless, nearly esoteric, reputation as a cosmic unifier by understanding it in the light of the contemporary medial turn. This volume consists of contributions that combine the political, aesthetic, musical and theoretical dimension of rhythm. These essays consider the unifying as well as disruptive potentials of rhythm by performing a close analysis of text and objects from contemporary arts, music and politics. In short, this volume complicates, disturbs and pluralizes the notion of rhythm.