I Mix What I Like! by Jared A. Ball

Author:Jared A. Ball
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2011-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

Ideally, we could also develop an equally “reconceptualized” notion of society, the press, copyright, the music industry, and so on, all of which also currently “divert attention from important questions” about how the mixtape can and must become part of journalism and media work produced by and in support of political organization within localized communities. When those involved in the culture make reference to something bold, unabashed, or unapologetic as “that’s hip-hop!” what they speak to is the very tendency among the colonized toward anti-colonial behavior. It is precisely what Kwame Ture meant when he made clear that “the job of the conscious is to make the unconscious conscious of their unconscious behavior.” When mixtape DJs noted the lack of objective balance in their colonized media environment, they re-established the rules of technology and art, making turntables into that which would allow ancient expression to be reformulated—“the turntables mimicked the tradition of looping repetition, trance-inducing sounds,” and as a result threw up immediate challenges to and dents in the constructed colonized media environment.574

And it is just this kind of potential threat that has caused the kinds of responses to the mixtape from institutions of the colonial state. Mixtapes, like illicit drugs, are used both to pacify resistance and justify the destabilization of a colonized people. Both are supplied or contributed to by established state institutions and then used to form the basis from which arrests, harassment, imprisonment, and a generally popularized view of a community-wide tendency toward crime can be fashioned.575 Impoverished communities may be flooded with illicit drugs by the state and then punished at will and whim for the crime of supply-and-demand (not to mention the attendant viciousness of violence, police brutality, and imprisonment associated with such enterprises), all while having their colonized condition justified to the larger population by media reports of their behavior. Similarly, intentionally impoverished communities who produce, in degrees of isolation, art forms that are not recognized by the state (as is the case initially with most colonized expression) can develop forms of communication that are also outside the very sanctioned forms that exclude them (as early Black and White radio and television excluded hip-hop) only to later be condemned and punished for those “crimes” by the very entities that had previously enlisted their support.

Indeed, the commercial exchange or sale of mixtapes, which often contain unlicensed, copyrighted material of others, is illegal. However, it is also true that many of the top DJs (Clue, Envy, Enuf, etc.) have been given exclusive tracks by major record labels, who hope to use mixtapes as a means of generating grassroots audience excitement (or “street buzz”) and gaining credibility in advance of sanctioned releases of their artists’ work. And yet if the young street vendors selling them are caught doing so, they are charged, incarcerated, and given permanent arrest records.576 The more popular cases of industry crackdowns against DJ Drama or Danger Mouse speak to the somewhat randomness of the state’s need to repress potentially dissident forms of communication, both in terms of content and delivery method.

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