Ràdio Web MACBA presents Variations #2 - The Globe

Jon Leidecker presents an introduction to the history of sound appropriationism in 20th century composition, popular art and mainstream media, and the convergence of these trends in the present day.

If music initially hesitated to follow the lead of the visual arts in the field of collage, it made up for lost time in the sixties. Breakthroughs in high fidelity sound, an influx of consumer level tape recorders, and the continued influence of television building the notion of the Global Village were among the factors that led to an explosion in collage based composition. The most obvious of the shared qualities in these pieces was a tendency towards the use of World music, culled from as many disparate locations as possible. If the new availability of ethnological recordings from around the world had shattered the notion that music was a universal language, musical collage can be seen as an instant response to the rest of the world as it became unignorable – a way to explore things held in common and the potential for hybrid identities.

Transcript available here:
http://rwm.macba.cat/uploads/variations/02Variationseng_script.pdf

Link to the complete series:
http://rwm.macba.cat/en/variations_tag

For more information on this series and other podcasts, visit Ràdio Web MACBA

(Originally broadcast Thursday 6pm, repeats Sunday 6am, Tuesday 6am and Wednesday 8am)