Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing by Julian Henriques

Author:Julian Henriques [Henriques, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Arts & Photography, Music, History & Criticism, Musical Genres, Popular, Rap, Humanities, Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781441144294
Amazon: 1441144293
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 2011-09-08T05:00:00+00:00

So is the ubiquity of the practice of repeating to be reduced to physical constraints of the material vibrations of sounding as such? Such affordances, as restrictions, are part of the answer. So too are the memories of previous techniques that may congeal into sociocultural habits and preferences, in the way that aesthetic tastes linger over defunct production techniques – as how, for instance, the epicurean value of strawberry jam outlasts the necessity sugar for fruit preservation. Furthermore, the value of repeating also has to do with the practice of its doing; that is, our attention and participation in the musicking of the repeat. This is the potential, rather than the limitation of the affordances of the material vibrations of sounding.

The dub version is always a repeat and a fresh performance both at the same time. The aim is not fidelity to any original, but variation, version, even aberration. In this respect, Dub, like Folk and Blues, takes its inspiration directly from oral traditions in which the work is always a live performance, rather than an artefact, text or score. The tradition of Jazz improvisation clearly partakes of this tradition, emphasising, as Baraka (1969) has discussed, the active process of propagation, rather than the reified object. Furthermore, as Sterne points out, there is a certain irony in the fact that the idea of fidelity to an original could only come about in conjunction with the technologies of sound reproduction.74 The fidelity of “high fidelity” was in fact an artefact of the marketing of the first 78rpm gramophones:

The very idea that a reproduced sound could be faithful to an original sound was an artefact of the culture and history of sound reproduction. Copies would not exist without reproduction, but neither would their originals. Sound fidelity was a story about sound reproduction that proved useful for selling machines.75

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