Transmission: Sound, Affect, and Joy Division/New Order

This post is a very, very initial attempt to sketch a theory of “transmission.” I develop this idea of transmission in conversation with Jasbir Puar, Joy Division, and Bauhaus. Transmission is an sound-based concept, an attempt to theorize from “the sonic” (as problematic a term as that may be). Transmission is an alternative to forms or modes of relationality that are grounded in the visual (e.g., intersection(ality)). Transmission is a way of understanding how we learn what might be called “affects” or “interpretive horizons” or “corporeal schemas.”


Again, this is a first sketch. I may well post a revision later. BUT, I do want to get this out before I have to leave this project for a bit to focus on another one. Because it is so raw, I welcome your feedback, questions, and suggestions.




 
Puar

Though her book Terrorist Assemblages is, eponymously, about “assemblage,” I want to re-read Jasbir Puar’s account of assemblages as a theory of transmission. “Transmission” is my term for the modes of relation “characterized by tendencies and degrees, adjusted through tweaking and modulation rather than norming” (116; emphasis mine). Norming is accomplished via the positive and negative reinforcement of normal and abnormal behaviors, respectively. As Butler has famously and clearly established, norms require and compel repetition: norms are “normative” because we are compelled to repeat them.  Tweaking and modulation assume patterns of repetition; they don’t compel repetition so much as alter the frequency or contours of that repetition. When one modulates a pitch, one alters the frequency of sound emitted; quite literally, sound waves are either faster or slower, and the peaks and valleys of the pitch sine wave pass more or less quickly (it’s called a “frequency” because it’s a measure of how “frequently” a single peak-valley pattern occurs in a given amount of time). One can tweak a sound in a number of ways--synthesizers allow for all sorts of “effects” to be put on a sound: you can arpeggiate it, bend the pitch, compress it...the options are seemingly limitless. So again, “disciplinary” regimes require and compel repetition. For example, repeated exposure to tonal harmony and the diatonic scale discipline (and thus “normalize”) one’s ears to hear Western systems of musical organization as intuitively meaningful. Tweaking and modulation, on the other hand, intervene in established patterns of repetition produce a specific audio profile. In tonality, “modulation” is more or less a key change, a shift from one harmonic profile (e.g., A major) to another (like E major). (Hence perhaps Andrew Goodwin’s comment in his essay in On Record that timber is more important than functional tonality. Timbre is an audio profile--it’s how a sound “feels,” its “grain.”)  Profiles measure things like frequency and intensity; to the recursiveness of repetition, the sort of 2D-linear folding back upon oneself (like a da capo), profiles add the exponentiality of 3D (depth) and even 4D (time). More simply, profiles aren’t linear measures of repetition, they are multi-dimensional accounts of intensity. Hence the gesture to 4D art: time-based media are not just spatial, but spatio-temporal.

Puar argues that transmissions are perceived at the level of affect.  Profiles are perceived and measured affectively (not by how one looks, but by how one “seems”). Affects are what gets tweaked or modulated, and tweaking and modulation is accomplished via affective transmission. As Puar explains,

a focus on affect reveals how actual bodies can be in multiple places and temporalities simultaneously, not (only) tethered through nostalgia or memory but folded and braided into intensifications...To extend Axel’s formulation, the homeland is not represented only as a demographic, a geographical place, nor primarily though history, memory, or even trauma, but is cohered through sensation, vibrations, echoes, speed, feedback loops, recursive folds and feelings” (171; emphasis mine). 

Nostalgia and memory are merely linear--they are two dimensional accounts of time (past-present-future on a single continuum). A braided intensification, however, is exponential rather than linear (I realize I’m using “exponential” somewhat loosely here, but bear with me...).  Braided intensification is multidimensional, spatio-temporal, at least 4D. Affects are both emitted and perceived in many registers at once; they are transmitted as intensities, “vibrations, [and] echoes.” So here Puar suggests we think of affective transmission like we think of the transmission of sound frequencies. Notably, these things that get transmitted--vibrations, echoes, feedback loops, etc.--are formal properties. They are not meanings or content, but compositional features of a transmission: the rate at which something occurs, its volume or intensity, etc. Transmission is about formal relationships, not about content or meaning.  

This emphasis on formal patterns is another thing that distinguishes “transmission” from “the visual.” I don’t have time to fully establish this claim here (so you’ll just have to believe me for now, and wait for me to publish the full argument), but I think I am warranted in claiming that we Westerners generally (emphasis on generally, I realize there are exceptions) frame/understand/conceive of “the visual” in terms of a signifier-signified “representational” logic: the appearance “represents” some inner “meaning” or “content.” This logic that I’m calling “visual” is what Ranciere would call the “aesthetic regime of the arts;” a Greenbergian Modernism isn’t too different--it just collapses content into form (the form is the content). Not only is transmission about affect, the “seeming” Puar opposes to “seeing,” it is further distinguished from the visual by its emphasis on form/patterns/profile rather than content. (One more thing to think about elsewhere/later: “receiving” is the compliment to “transmitting”-- interesting that “receptivity” is the capacity to be affected, isn’t it?).

So, in sum, I read Puar as suggesting a notion of “transmision” that includes the following features:

1. seeming rather than seeing
2. intensification rather than linear increase
3. 4D rather than 2D
4. Form rather than content
5. Modulation and tweaking rather than normalizing

Transmitting “Transmission’s” Affect

Both Joy Division’s original song “Transmission,” and Bauhaus/Peter Murphy’s cover of “Transmission” demonstrate a general logic of “transmission.” As the practice of covering a song suggests, this logic of transmission is a form of tweaking or modulation. I am particularly interested in (and not completely finished thinking through) what Bauhaus/Murphy appropriate from Joy Division. In order to cover the song, Murphy deems it necessary to also dance and comport himself like Ian Curtis (Joy Division’s frontman). So, in Murphy’s cover, the “music” and the “affect” are intertwined: Murphy’s cover suggests that the dancing, Curtis’s “seeming” or affective profile, are part and parcel of the song itself, and covering the song means performing both the music and the affective profile.


“Transmission” is Joy Division’s first single on Factory. Joy Division’s original version, like Puar’s text, considers “transmission” to be an alternative to the visual. Its lyrical content defines “transmission” as a specific mode of non-visual communication or comportment.


The first verse explicitly contrasts the transmission of sound with vision:

    Listen to the silence, let it ring on
    Eyes dark, grey lenses, frightened of the sun
    We would have a fine time living in the night
    Left to blind destruction, waiting for our sight

What does one do when left to blind destruction, waiting for sight?  According to the chorus, the appropriate course of action is: “dance, dance, dance, dance dance to the radio” in the absence of vision. (It seems that initial invocation of silence isn’t to be taken too seriously--maybe people are silent, but the radio seems to be working just fine.) Transmission is not sight or seeing--it has somethign todo with listening and with dancing, with the interaction between sound and bodily affect/comportment.  A later verse declares that “No language, just sound, that’s all we need now.” This contrast between language and sound suggests that “sound” is not about content or meaning, because that’s what language is (i.e., sounds attached to specific meanings). So the verses are all about sound and listening as opposed to seeing, and the choruses are all about dancing. So the lyrics of the song privilege sound and sensibility (i.e., bodiy comportment, dancing) over the visual. (The instrumental track reinforces the idea that transmission is about form rather than content. The bass and guitar lines are mainly repeated sequences of the same pitch; the song is not about chord progressions, but about the rate at which a single note is repeated.) While the verse attends to sound, the chorus points us toward affect. It is this affect that Curtis, the lead singer, demonstrates in his own iconic dancing. Let’s look at several Joy Division performances:


Here is their Peel Sessions performance of “Transmission”:



 Pay particular attention to Ian Curtis’s iconic dancing; it’s most evident from 1:57 on.  There are better examples of it in this video at 1:38, 2:58 and 3:15:

 
You can also see it here, in their performance of “She’s Lost Control”:



It is precisely this affective dimension of the song that gets “transmitted” to/in Peter Murphy’s cover of “Transmission.” Murphy performs this both solo, and with his band Bahuaus. Murphy and Curtis were roughly contemporaries back in the 70s. Though Curtis’s dancing is now iconic, Murphy was actually trained as a dancer. So given both the (in)famous character of Curtis’s rather signature dancing style, and Murphy’s tendency to pay attention to dancing, it is not surprising that Murphy would pick up on Curtis’s dancing. But what I would argue is that it is precisely Curtis’s dancing that is the thing being “covered” here; one cannot properly cover the song without also doing the dance.

Murphy often covers the song, and he pretty much always makes the dance a part of the performance. Here are a ton of examples:

This one is probably the best quality, both in terms of frequency of dance performance, and pure audio quality:
 


 
This one is also pretty high-quality, though he doesn’t start dancing until about 0:43:
 


 
Here is a closer-up focus on Murphy:
 


 
Here, look at 0:22-25. This one is pretty close-up and clear:
 


 
Here is another one; the dancing is mainly at the beginning:
 


 
I think it’s important to include all these examples of all these different performances because it establishes that Murphy includes the dance as a part of the general performance of the song--it’s just as much a part of the song as the lyrics and the singing, or the bass riff.  Murphy’s performance of “Transmission” treats Curtis’s dancing as an integral part of the song itself--the sound of the song includes the affective profile of Curtis’s dancing.  The music and the affective profile are in a relationship of “braided intensification”: they exponentially augment each other, working together to create that “sense” of Joy-Division-ness. So we can say that the sound and the affect are in a relationship of mutual “transmission,” both in the original, and as it is in turn “transmitted” to Murphy. Receiving it as a “transmission,” and then transmitting it back out again, Murphy doesn’t repeat either the music or the dancing--he tweaks and modifies it.

This tweaking and modulation is even more evident in Ministry’s “Blue Monday”-inspired song “Everyday is Halloween.” “Blue Monday” is, of course, the monumental, iconic, historical, very very very important 1983 single from New Order. New Order is, of course, the surviving members of Joy Division--everyone minus Curtis, who committed suicide. I’m not going to embed the videos for these two songs; you can find “Blue Monday” here, and “Everyday is Halloween” here. Ministry’s song is identifiably inspired by “Blue Monday,” but not as directly related as a cover would be. In fact, the greater distance between the two songs is evidence of tweaking and modulation--Ministry reworked “Blue Monday” in their own terms, put it in a new context or “profile.” But the relationships are pretty obvious. The rhythm sections (drum machines, drums, and bass riffs) are really actually quite similar, especially the sixteenth-note patterns in the drum machines in both songs. The arpeggiated bass lines are also noticeably similar. It’s pretty evident to even a not very careful listener that the Ministry song is inspired by “Blue Monday”--it’s not the same song, it’s not a cover, and it’s not even a remix. “Everyday is Halloween” is the Chicago goth version of Manchester post-punk. This point is perhaps most clear by Ministry singer Al Jourgensen’s fake British accent--something that is mainly absent from the rest of the Ministry discography, but very evident on this track. Here too bodily affect--this time in the form of accent--is braided together with other, more strictly, musical elements of a song. It is both affect and sound that get transmitted from New Order to Ministry. (There is a similar sort of “transmission” in early Green Day songs--Billie Joe Armstrong sings with a Rotten/Strummer-like fake British accent.)

 
So, in sum, these various “transmissions” of Joy Division/New Order help clarify what sort of relationship a “transmission” is. It is one of “braided intensification” between sound and affect--or, more generally, of “braided intensification” across sensory/perceptory registers. It is a relationship of tweaking and modulation; it’s not norming, but is rather deviation (or, as Ministry might suggest, it’s a sort of deviance that shows how effed-up everyone else is-- “I’m not the one who’s so absurd,” remember.) Transmission is also a relationship about form above (and perhaps in exclusion of) meaning or content. This privileging of form over content is often realized as an emhasis on “seeming” rather than “signifying.” In order to “seem” like Joy Division/New Order, one must perform not only their music, but their affective profile (dancing, accent). However, one can’t just repeat it; one is obliged to modify it, to “modulate” it.

 
Again, this is very, very rough, and I will certainly need to revise it and flesh it out. To that end, I very much welcome your feedback!

Melismas Like Jagger: on the race/gender politics of Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger"

Consistent readers of this blog know that I’ve been somewhat interested in the politics of melisma in contemporary pop music. I have a piece on Avril Levigne’s use of melisma to signify both “blackness” and sexual availability you can read here. Today, though I want to think about melisma in a different context: Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera’s use of melisma in Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger.” I will argue that their different melismatic styles are meant to reflect and reinforce race- and gender- based differences. I will ultimately argue that the “moves” Levine/Maroon 5 appropriate from Jagger are less corporeal/sexual “moves,” and more an approach to racial/musical appropriation.

In Maroon 5’s song, Levine and Aguilera each use very different styles of melismatic ornamentation. But let’s listen to the song first:

Levine uses ornamentation very sparingly: he only melismas on “mo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oves.” That’s a one-syllable word stretched into 9 syllables. However, unlike with Aguilera’s vocal work, Levine’s (relative to CA’s performance, excessively) deliberate approach allows him to clearly articulate each and every separate note. This clear articulation and deliberate pacing creates the sense of mastery: Levine is in complete control of the melisma—it’s not some runaway foray into potentially infinite noodling. The melisma ends on a repeated note—the last “o-oves” are both on the same pitch—thus creating a definitive end (even, perhaps, “resolution,” that prized tonal gesture) to Levine’s dalliance with ornamentation.

Aguilera, a gifted vocalist whose work in the 90s and early 2000s is full of difficult, complex melismas, doesn’t really make much use of extended ornamentation. In this track, her ornaments are very compressed: she may run through more than a few notes, but she does so very, very quickly. For example, the runs on “keep it” and “this” from 3:26-30 are extremely fast: she goes through a lot of notes really quickly. It’s also worth noting that she’s referencing her “secret,” the radio-friendly euphemism for her “sexual virtue.” Her ornamentation goes by so quickly it’s easy to overlook its complexity. (The only time Aguilera echoes Levine’s words (3:51-2), her embelisment is more like his—a deliberate splitting of the word into two syllabus—and less like hers—definitely not melismatic.) Technically, then, Aguilera’s vocal technique is more masterful than Levine’s: her melismas are harder, faster, and stronger than his. But they are read as evidence of less mastery because they are feminized. Slippery, hard to perceive, these quick, complex melismas are feminized in the same way that Carmen’s chromaticism is feminized in Bizet’s opera (see McClary’s famous analysis of Carmen in Feminine Endings). Remember, melismas are appropriate in referencing women’s sexuality (one’s “secret”), so melismas must mean ladybits, femininity, etc.

In my earlier post on (Avril) Levinge (too much homophony with Avril Levigne and Adam Levine…), I argued that in contemporary pop music, melisma signifies “blackness.” It’s associated with R&B, and especially with female singers who are (or read primarily as) black—Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, etc. So if melisma usually reads “black”, does “Moves Like Jagger”’s gendered division of melismatic labor keep with this standard racialization, or does the gender play destabilize the standard racialization of melisma?

It all turns on Jagger’s moves—literally (with the bendy melodic line of a melisma) and figuratively. Mick Jagger is infamous for appropriating stereotypical black masculinity: its supposed authenticity, toughness, and above all, hypersexuality. To have “moves like Jagger” is to have his black-hypersexuality-filtered-and-domesticated-through-whiteness. However, in the video, Levine doesn’t actually move his body in the style of Jagger—it’s white female women who don Jagger-esque costumes and mimic his dancing and body comportment. Levine refrains from actually really showing ANY “moves” at all—he mostly doesn’t dance. In fact, he stands there, tattooed, shirtless, and in black pants looking more like Iggy Pop or Peter Murphy than like Mick Jagger. But, that women perform Jagger’s moves, added to the fact that melisma is generally feminized in the track via its association with Aguilera, Levine’s claim to have “moves like Jagger” is primarily, or most directly, a claim to have mastered femininity. Interestingly, this claim about gender (AL’s masculinity can appropriate and domesticate feminized ornament and feminized receptivity generally) covers over the deeply racial politics of Jagger’s own moves. By making it seem like Jagger’s moves are mainly about gender, Maroon 5’s song burries the fact that, in their original context, they were highly and overtly racialized. More insidiously, the Maroon 5 song incourages us to ignore the fact that their use of “Jagger”-as-metaphor (well, as simile, technically) is still about race, too. Levine gets the lyric “moves like Jagger” from the overworn hip hop meme that rhymes “swagger” with “Jagger”. So while a lot of black male rappers are appropriating Jagger’s appropriation of blackness (in a move I call “postmillennial black hipness”), Levine is appropriating and domesticating this move made by black male rappers. To say he has “moves like Jagger” is to both appropriate the newly-trendy Jagger reference, and to domesticate it for mainstream white audiences: Levine changes the obviously more rhyme-appropriate “swagger” for “moves,” thus replacing a word with obvious connotations of black masculinity (swagger) for a more neutral, even old-fashioned term (moves). Like Mick and Keith back in the good-ol’ 60s, Levine is appropriating black masculinity as a means of demonstrating his sexual potency/power over women. This is the actual ”move” that Levine gets from Jagger: it’s not his dancing, or his attitude, or even his “swagger,” it’s his musical/racial appropriation.

Eventually I want to compare this use of melisma—which is quite disfavored these days among top-40 vocalists—to the “stutter”. The “stutter” is like melisma because it is an approach to vowel sounds: while melismas noodle around on pitches over extended vowel vocalizations, “the stutter” is the effect created when a producer either stops-and-starts a long vowel vocalization or cuts and loops a quick vowel vocalization. Unlike conventional stuttering, which usually pertains to consonant sounds, "the stutter" is an approach to ornamenting vowel vocalizations. I can think of a small number of examples of black artists using “the stutter” (e.g., the BE Peas), this is mainly something found in the work of white female pop singers. So, I think there is potentially something interesting in comparing the stutter to melisma, not just technically, but at the level of race/gender politics. But that will have to wait, b/c I’m off to the California Roundtable on Philosophy and Race next weekend.