Okay, I loathe the last line.

As you may know, authors often write Op-Ed columns during the weeks and months when their book is released. The objective is to find a convincing narrative to link the news of the day with the argument that they wrote a year, two or more years before the news of the day. It often isn’t pretty, and the digital floor of the newsrooms of America are littered with Op-Eds that were never published. And well, here’s one of mine:

This week, rapper Jay-Z released “Glory,” a song that addresses his feelings about becoming a parent to his newborn child with Beyoncé, a girl named Blue Ivy. The single marks a significant departure from what fans of rap are accustomed to hearing on the radio and Internet: it is both a love song and a lullaby, a lament over a lost pregnancy, and a promise to faithful service as a father. Fans of Jay-Z’s music won’t be surprised at the content or tone of the song: the rapper has a decade’s worth of lyrics dealing with his feelings about parenting and his love of children (most especially, his nephews). But “Glory” calls our attention to the remarkable absence of rap songs that are by or for the pre-teen set.

The world of what we might call “kids rap” is populated almost entirely by children, and most of them are the offspring of music professionals. The singer Jordy, son of music producer Claude Lemoine, is on the record books for being the youngest #1 charting singer for his rap, “Dur Dur d’être bébé!” While relatively unknown in the U.S., this 1992 single—produced when Jordy was only 4—was a dance hit across Europe, South America and Asia. Children of rappers in the U.S. have not fared as well on the charts.  Lil’ Romeo, son of rappers Master P and Sonya C, may be at the top of the pack with one gold, one platinum and one double platinum album. While there is some rap music that is marketed to children—the 2008 book and CD “Hip Hop Speaks to Children” is a good example—it is generally repackaged or excerpted, as opposed to being created for this purpose.

There are good reasons to think the market in kids rap would flourish. Within film, actors who become parents tend to diversify their portfolio to include films for children. Rappers haven’t done this, even though many are parents or even grandparents. Additionally the pre-teen market is huge, a fact demonstrated in Taylor Swift’s recent phenomenal success. According to one estimate, the 12-to-19-age bracket is at a historic high of 35 million kids. Kiddy ditties, or bubblegum pop, have captivated these consumers; the leading edge of the demo fueled the success of boy bands like O-Town and divas like Britney Spears. Moreover, this generation grew up with rap music woven into all aspects of their cultural experience: from school curricula to car advertisements.

The explanation for the missing genre of kids rap lies in the nature of creativity. Almost all of our popular music grows out of artistic circles where members collaborate and experiment, share grievances and opportunities, and cobble together enough money to continue to perform for bigger (or better) audiences. The music that does not grow from these roots, a collection of what we might call “music without genres,” is music made to satisfy market demand, with no community to support it. Kids rap, like bubblegum pop, and World Music, are commercial products crafted for a specific demographic. Consumers of kids rap might think of themselves as music fans, but they’re really not distinguishing on the basis of any musical characteristics at all. Just as World Music combines varied musical cultures, kids rap combines attributes of multiple styles and mutes their differences in order to attract dollars.

It is hard to imagine another fate for kids rap, as so many of the attributes of adult creative collaboration are beyond their emotional and developmental reach. But it is possible to imagine a group of rappers, convinced of the necessity of making mature, kid-friendly music, combining their powers to create something new, and something beautiful. “Glory” should be an inspiration to us, just as Blue was to its author.

 

Dear Sir or Madame,

I would normally prefer to address you by name, but I don’t know your name. You haven’t corresponded with me directly, nor did the Press’s promotions representative disclose your name to me. I know you only as the person who made the decision  to delete content from a blog post I prepared for the Press. I was told that you chose to delete this text because it included a link to a music video that depicts naked bodies. I wish to express my thoughts on this matter, even though you have not asked me for them.

I am writing to you here, on my blog, rather than finding out your “real” identity for a couple of reasons: first, you saw no need to correspond with me, the author of the content you removed, so I think it is fair that I do the same. Well, now I do. The truth is that until today, I had a different understanding of our mutual rights and responsibilities–mine as “author” and yours as “publisher.” Until today, I did not expect that you would erase my words or ideas without my permission. Second, I don’t particularly care about this single decision as much as I do the class of decisions into which it falls. That is, I don’t care so much about reinstating the text on the blog. After all, the blog is your property, not mine. But I think it is important that educated people have frequent discussions about the character and quality of discourse and freedom of expression, and this is an opportunity to do so.  Third, I suspect your decision was based on your sense of what the leaders of the organization that employs you would prefer, rather than your individual wishes or preferences. In this sense, it makes little sense to address you as an individual. And fourth, organizations–publishing houses or record labels, art galleries or museums–don’t typically make decisions in a vacuum, but base them on a sense of best practices in the field. So, the field is a more appropriate context for appeal.

I must, therefore, address myself to all those bosses, leaders, and decision-makers who believe the moral course, when faced with the possibility that some employees, clients, members, or followers might be offended, is to blight that offense from the earth. To remove it from view. To extinguish it.

I hope to convince you that your thinking is wrong.

I argue that the moral thing –when you think something good and right might pose offense– is to add a step into the process that allows people to chose for themselves when and what kind of material to consume. In this case I included both a description of the content in the video and added a hyperlink instead of embedding the content. Thus, only those readers of your blog who decide–after reading the description–to click through to the video would be able to see it.

Here is that text:

“Gobbledigook” by Sigur Ros. In the final chapter of Banding Together I mention a number of bands and songs that are, for my purposes, “unclassifiable.” It made sense to end the playlist with some of these, including this charming tune by Icelandic band Sigur Ros. You should watch the video for this song, as long as you are not offended by playful nudity.

See? I explain there is nudity and describe it as “playful” (check it out if you care to; I stand behind this). And I make people click through–I don’t embed it right there for all to see.

I am not interested in regulating what others view on the internet. You shouldn’t be in this business either. Particularly so as you are engaged in a business which depends upon free inquiry and creative expression. If such freedom did not exist your press would either cease to function, or would publish–one imagines–even more books about identifying finches.

Finches are great, but is that really the world you envisioned when you took this job? Or did you think you might contribute to the expansion of knowledge? The cultivation of the mind? The exploration of new ideas?

I think your decision today is inconsistent with what you do, and should, stand for and behind.

And not for nothing–the “Gobbledigook” video is not profane. I mean, I’m sure there’s someone on earth who would find it to be so–that’s why I presented it as I did–but surely that is a small and reactionary minority of viewers. And we should stand up to them, because they are wrong. If you watch the video you will see that it depicts naked humans (presumably they are Icelandic humans, as that’s where the band is from) running on a beach, through a forest, playing “drums” on a downed log, talking, painting letters on each other using some sort of mud (I think), singing, and dancing. Yes, they are naked. But they so clearly and undeniably represent beauty, and freedom, and the majesty and wonder of the human form. Not its cruelty. Not its avarice, or meanness, or resentments. Its joy. You should get behind joy. You should get behind beautiful bodies. You should get behind any piece of culture that makes people hopeful. That makes us laugh, or smile, or remember what it was like to be a kid, or what it’s like to be with friends, or out camping, or running. What sand feels like between your toes, or what autumn leaves smell like when you run your hands through them. These are the things to stand behind.

Banding Together: The Spotify Playlist

I love that my friend Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) claims that my book “has a beat and you can dance to it,” but it just isn’t true. I begged Princeton University Press to make the world’s first musical book—I imagined something like those greeting cards—but it wasn’t to be. Thank goodness for Spotify. This free service will allow you access to an amazing repository of recorded music (including the stuff in your existing digital library). You can create playlists, share them with others, and even collaborate in their creation! It really is a terrific resource.

I’ve created a playlist I’d like to share with you (“Banding Together: The Spotify Playlist for the Book”). Right now it clocks in around 3 hours, and I’m still looking for more music to add! Each of the songs included is either specifically mentioned in the text, or stands as a representative of a musical style that I discuss in Banding Together.

Anyone that wants to hear the playlist needs to join Spotify (by creating a login ID and password), and downloading the free software. Then you can find the playlist for “Banding Together” by typing “spotify:user:lenajc” into the search box, or clicking on the link above.

Herewith, the track annotation for Banding Together: The Spotify Playlist:

• “Funky Butt” by Mississippi John Hurt. The Library of Congress did us a magnificent favor by funding the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress, which now contains over 3 million artifacts including recordings like this one. “Funky Butt” is King Buddy Bolden’s “signature tune” (and on page 79 I describe its link to other “funky” things), but I love Hurt’s version—a beautiful guitar tone, a strong and sweet vocal, and hilarious lyrics.
• “Livery Stable Blues” by the Original Dixieland Jass Band. I included this song for two reasons: the first is that I discuss the politics around the crediting of this white band as “original Dixieland” in Chapter 3 (starting on page 98). The second is that Chicago Judge George A. Carpenter argued (while presiding over a copyright dispute) that “no living human being could listen to that result on the phonograph and discover anything musical on it” (see page 101). I wonder what you think about Carpenter’s taste?

Author interview

My first book, Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music, is now available. I’ve tried my best to describe on the jacket (which is also the text you’ll see at Amazon, PUP, and other places the book is sold) what the book is about. My editor, Eric Schwartz, had the brilliant idea that we should also do a short Q&A video. We sat down this week with the very first copy and had a quick chat in a local cafe. Here’s what happened:

Advances in spam

Two examples of substantial leaps forward in the art and artistry of unwanted digital mail.

The shorter as the first–a comment posted today on WITW (and caught by wordpress’s excellence spambottleneck):

I saw a lot of website but I believe this one contains something special in it. “Of all human ills, greatest is fortune’s wayward tyranny.” by Sophocles.

I take the backhanded compliment, and only wish this was coming from one of the spam bots that had both “elongate” and “member” in the address–that would be a cherry on top of this sundae.

Number two is sent by a friend–email spam:

Dear Email Account Holder,

This is to inform you that your email address has won a compensation grant
of $100,000 (USD) in the ongoing CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) and IMF
(International Monetary Funds) joint mandate to compensate victims of
scam/Advance fee fraud whom have lost money to Nigeria scammers under the
pretense of Lottery, Beneficiary, Loan and Contract awards etc.

Contact the Debt Management Office for the clearance of your funds with the
details below;

Dr. Abraham Nwankwo
Director-General
Email: dmo.gov.ng@9.cn
Telephone: +234-703-239-3153
General Fax: +234-9-523-7396
Website: www.dmo.gov.ng

Payment would be remitted to you within 3 working days upon certified
verification from the office above. We would appreciate your urgent reply to
ascertain vividly that you are the bearer of this email.

Thanks and Congratulation in advance

Regards,
Lindy Tucker
Public Affairs Commission
Central Bank of Nigeria

So, the scam here is that you are entitled to money due to winning a Nigerian lottery held to repay people who lost money in Nigerian lottery scams. Brilliant. We live in a very post-, meta- world.

#2

Basically closed-channel:

Aura: Scatterplot

Siri: Montclair SocioBlog

Nadine: A (Budding) Sociologist’s Commonplace Book/Code and Culture

Jed: Total Drek

Keith: The Soc Shrine

Frankie: Crooked Timber

Charlotte: WITW

 

 

Welcome!

Just the other day, I mentioned that I think we need a little socblogosphere 2.0. And just in time: please welcome Fred Wherry’s Culture of Markets to the web. He promises to show us how economists “sometimes get it wrong.” That sounds fun, dunnit?

Experiments in cultural markets

As some of you know, comedian Louis CK has been in the news of late because he sold a DRM-free copy of his recent comedy special direct-to-fans, from his website, for only $5. And he’s now made a million dollars. And gotten rid of most of it. Allegedly, the idea sprung from Louis’s frustration selling copies of shows through DVDs or iTunes sales in the past; he’s among the many performers who complain that these products make profits for producers, but not the artists. So, he spent time and money building a simple interface website, and self-producing a high-quality video of a show at New York’s Beacon theater and sold it himself. The website text explained the file had,

“no regional restrictions, no crap. You can download this file, play it as much as you like, burn it to a DVD, whatever.”

Of course, the risk was that copies would soon be distributed “for free” over the internet, and fans would not pay the $5 to purchase directly from the website. Economists are a fan of these sorts of experiments–to see under what conditions people will pay for a service that they could use for free, when the expectation is that users should pay. The one I know best I think of as “the bagel experiment,” and there’s a nice, reader-friendly description of it here, by Dubner.

Louis went on Jimmy Fallon’s show last night to announce sales had topped $1 million. His website now includes a screen shot of the paypal page showing these sales, and a statement including the following:

I wanted to let you know what I’m doing with [the money from sales-. People are paying attention to what’s going on with this thing. So I guess I want to set an example of what you can do if you all of a sudden have a million dollars that people just gave to you directly because you told jokes.

So I’m breaking the million into four pieces.

the first 250k is going to pay back what the special cost to produce and the website to build.

The second 250k is going back to my staff and the people who work for me on the special and on my show. I’m giving them a big fat bonus.

The third 280k is going to a few different charities. They are listed below in case you’d like to donate to them also. Some of these i learned about through friends, some were reccomended through twitter.

• The Fistula Foundation
• The Pablove Foundation
• charity: water
• Kiva
• Green Chimneys

That leaves me with 220k for myself. Some of that will pay my rent and will care for my childen. The rest I will do terrible, horrible things with and none of that is any of your business. In any case, to me, 220k is enough out of a million.

I never viewed money as being “my money” I always saw it as “The money” It’s a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.

It is interesting to see how cultural markets react in the face of customers having an enhanced understanding of the principles on which they are founded. As we understand more about how internet-based markets work, our decisions are impacted, and the markets change in response to us.

One thing I haven’t seen yet is a groupon-style market (where a reserve number of purchases needs to be met) where price is variable. That is, the provider of the service (say, an album, or a comedy DVD) defines in advance the cost of that service (e.g., $500K for labor, overhead, talent, etc.), and the cost to consumers cannot rise above that amount. What is left to vary is the number of users that bear the cost. In this hypothetical, 500,000 users would pay $1, 250,000 would pay $2 and so forth. How many people would participate? What other variables would need to vary in order to impact participation levels? What if, for example, consumers had only a week to decide if they would participate, but had no knowledge of how many others would do so? What if users had 2 months, but could see a counter of people who had agreed to pay into the pot? What if the size of the total cost was hidden, and users could only see the current per-person rate?

Curious as to your thoughts, on the Louis CK thing, earlier similar events by Radiohead and others, and my hypotheticals.

Entr’acte

Two items of note for frequent readers of WITW:

1. You may be interested in reading Sarah Sobieraj’s piece on Occupy Wall Street, which features a photograph (taken by me) that first appeared on this blog.

2. The final Grammy nominations came out a few weeks ago and we were on it! Here’s the announcement from my friends at ALIAS chamber ensemble:

It is with tremendous pride and joy that we share with you news that ALIAS Chamber Ensemble has been nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Small Ensemble Performance category! While this news would be exciting for any organization, it is especially so for ALIAS, as it is for our very first CD, Gabriela Lena Frank: Hilos, released by Naxos Records’ American Classics label in February 2011.

Hilos would not have been possible without the tireless support of composer and fellow performer Gabriela Lena Frank, engineer Gary Hedden, producer D. Wilson Ochoa, the fantastic musicians and dedicated Board of Directors of ALIAS, and Naxos Records. To each, we offer a sincere thank you. Thank you, too, to our project supporters The Schubert Club, Drs. Jonathan Neufeld and Jennifer Lena, Vanderbilt University and the Blair School of Music.

Jonathan and I are listed as “project supporters” because we provided the bulk of the funding for the commission and the recording of this record through a research grant awarded to us by Vanderbilt (which is how they got in the list, a little unfairly, to be totally honest).

The ratings game

In the continuing series, “Ask WITW,” we respond to reader questions with sometimes serious, sometimes insane, commentary. Today, we’ll take up two questions from Peter over at Rethinking Markets:

I’d like you to write about:
1) how and why recommendation engines seem to get suckier over time using them – what’s with the degradation of predictive power, the more it knows what you like/are listening to/are buying? How could Netflix imagine that I’d want to watch Apollo 13, much less that it’d be a top 10 for me?

2) Pushback by content producers in the technological transformation of cultural product delivery. E.g., How is it that a mass paperback like David McCullough’s The Great Bridge, from 1983, is available for $.35 as a used paperback, but is $15 on a kindle? How is it $18 to ‘buy’ Mean Girls on AppleTV?

I love these questions, especially since I’m unlikely to look tragically unhip answering them.

On #1:

Two broad answers seem likely.