fatima al qadiri ILM edition, (+ ayshay + future brown)

i was eating amazing sri lankan food last night and then asleep, i've missed literally everything so feel free to send any crucial hot takes or hot tweets my way!

whiney's "no one cares" argument is very bizarre, a huge amount of the music we write about - positive and negative - has a tiny audience. also i have written many negative pieces in my time and few, ie none, of them have ended up in this brouhaha so obviously people do care

Fatima Al Qadiri's response is a bit weird though, it's like she's suggesting that because all collaborators were willingly involved in the FB project, then there's no possibility of appropriation occurring.

"gross, you got ART SCHOOL in my authentic ideas of what spaces black people should be in" - I think the point in these reviews is more like exhibition spaces are generally sterile places. I don't think it's about where black people should or shouldn't be.

also i am keeping a tally of White People Calling Me White in the wake of this and it keeps growing!

You know, like it's so hip and cool and rad when Matthew Barney puts Agnostic Front/Murphy's Law guys in Cremaster Cycle or Banks Violette teams with SunnO))) or the National play in a museum for 6 hours or whatever or AnCo plays the Gug or w/e ...

lol i don't think any of these are hip or cool or rad

whiney vs lex vs whiteness

not sure whether to cry or wind my watch

Sure, voluntary participation doesn't mean appropriation didn't take place, but if you don't have any justifiable claim to the group you say is being appropriated and co-opted from and you aren't offering dissenting opinions from people from that group, then on whose behalf are you making the accusation? With what critical authority are you making it? Without at least that, it becomes weird to be ringing the appropriation and co-option bell. Do any grime, drill, reggae, dancehall, etc. artists have opinions about Future Brown's project that we could give attention to? Do any of them feel co-opted? Like they've been used to garner street cred?

do miley cyrus's dancers have opinions about her stage performances? do they feel co-opted?

I don't even think it has to be from the grime, drill, reggae, dancehall scene of whatever. I honestly don't think FB is really worth any of those people caring about. But I do think a critic, in lex's case an established writer, has a place to make a sustained argument about the cultural politics involved which can be judged on its own merits.

In a weird way, a big part of FB and FAQ seems to involve an attempt to present meta-statements around appropriation and global network culture in the first place (some of which also seem incoherent or at least unsatisfactory at best). So it's especially strange to me that FAQ went for such a non-response regarding what might actually be at stake. Playing strategy I guess.

Ugh, don't be deliberately obtuse. There were black women who had opinions about what Miley Cyrus was doing that drove and contributed to that larger dialogue. We actually did have examples of her dancers speaking out both in support of and against her treatment of them. So yes, I am interested in what artists from those music scenes might have to say about this if they even care. A critical conversation about the appropriation or co-option of a specific group that doesn't involve the voices of the people from that group just feels like another type of co-opting.

Greer OTM as fuck

yes, of course their voices are interesting, though my point has always been the context in which those artists receive minimal attention unless they collaborate with artists with more middle-class/privileged sensibilities, but no, you don't need to be the specific person being co-opted to recognise when co-option is taking place. if you applied that to every other incidence of privilege and appropriation being called out...

i mean: i don't have to be a grime artist to recognise that america-based oil/fashion/art money selling grime back to us is co-option

or that utopian rhetoric about global boundarylessness is dangerous stuff that feeds into the myth of the internet as a great leveller

from a critic's pov, though, i found FAQ's demand that meaghan and i should have interviewed her most bizarre; since when are artists interviewed for opinion pieces or album reviews? the whole point is for the critic to respond to the art shorn of the artist's intentions.

(i'm not remotely mad that FAQ responded, ofc, artists can do what they want just like critics can do what they want, though i don't think she really got what i was criticising) (but i do think both artists and critics should at least try to maintain a semblance of a fourth wall - less chummy, more edifying)

In the cold light of day, you should have just gone "lol bass music Psyence Fiction" and left it at that.

If not meant ironically, Whiney's "a white-dominated space like a museum" is extremely revealing given we're talking about self-consciously globalised music here. Like, which museums? In any case it strikes me that the argument primarily is about class here.

Like, when Prokofiev's grandson* started producing grime beats, no one particularly cared, partly because of the vibrancy of what was going on elsewhere in the scene but also because no one suddenly elevated him as the scene's big genius or made any grandiose conceptual claims on his part.

Either way if this had been a collection of undeniable bangers or indeed had been particularly musically interesting at all, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. (Actually, we might, given the arguments that were leveled at MIA or even someone like The Bug, but people would be taking different sides). It doesn't sound particularly forward-looking to these ears, although it has all the signifiers of being so, I feel like I've heard everything here before, like a decade before in some cases.

On the other hand, I dunno, maybe Timberlee or Riko are grateful for the (even slightly) expanded audience here. Or even the paycheck.

*This fact is still ridiculous to me.

Maybe the problem here is that Lex and Future Brown are essentially the same kind of people, with a similar agenda/love regarding black popular music, except one is working within the field of critical journalism, and the others are working at the intersection of music/art/fashion. Maybe they have a different ideology about how to go about this, assuming the album did bang (it doesnt) what would it be for outsiders to work with these artists in a non-appropriative way? Also, is it appropriation for an established journalist to champion scenes from which they are somehow alien demographically to further their career?

xxposts - sorry, lex!

Also, is it appropriation for an established journalist to champion scenes from which they are somehow alien demographically to further their career?

― Josephine, Saturday, 28 February 2015 12:48 (4 hours ago) Permalink

what kind of mind-reading shit is this? if lex likes tink he's welcome to write about tink, i dont think u have to get presumptive about his motives

likewise future brown are welcome to collab w/ tink assuming they can make good music with tink (they did not)

fwiw i am of the mind that meta-criticism is p boring to anyone but non critics so kind of align w/ chris on the overarching if not the specifics ... i mean i cosigned lex's argument but have a super-passing familiarity with this group's whole ideological schtick, if he & m overreached in their portrayal of FB's expressed thesis—which, btw, is I think why she mentioned not being interviewed by either one, that they were assigning the group a thesis that they had not expressed, it wasn't like 'you should have interviewed me,' it was like, 'did i SAY that i think [x]'...—nyway, if he & m overreached in their portrayal of FB's thesis, if they attributed the critical noise around them to the group itself w/out carefully delineating the two, then that's on them to a degree, or something they should be watching out for ... nb this group is bad & we all *know* there's something like this as an underpinning to their bad music bc otherwise they would try to compete on Tink et al's actual terrain, but they can't so they dont ...

worldclash aesthetics are a poison & the real damage wrought by the hollerboard over the past x years ...

fwiw future brown are one of the few acts this year I've been asked about irl

It's exactly the kind of middle brow shit that pops off among ppl who think they are too smart for pop music but don't care enough to spend time listening to music and it'll get even worse if a meme of their being suppressed by outsiders takes on steam

ILM = the kind of middle brow crit that pops off among critics who think they're too smart for art school but don't care enough to spend time making art

^^^OTM

Writing is art, art school is a sham

also lots of ilxors make amazing art

Tweets are music

Simon Reynolds tweet · Feb 27
stunned to totally agree with (Lex)critique of Future Brown ... noting also echoes of MIA controversy of yore

Kind of hilarious that Simon is explicitly reminding people that he wrote "don't let the brown skin fool you" about M.I.A. in Lex's defense

Browns of Future Passed

For all the arty/ideological trappings, the foofaraw still boils down to the old "you don't get it"/"I do get it, I just don't like it" divide. Of course FAQ thinks the writers should talk to her, because of course she thinks they just don't understand -- like every artist who's ever gotten a bad review. (NB: Sometimes the artists are right! But in this case, Lex's work seems a lot more nuanced and well thought out than FB's.)

I think the only reason FAQ mentioned not being interviewed by Lex was the fact that he makes a whole series a malicious assertions about her contacts/friends/money/concepts which are unsubstantiated in the article. Not because she wanted to explain the project to him so he 'got it'. Also, the money for the project would have come from Warp, no? I wonder if Warp insisted the article be taken down? If they heavily invested in this project, then that would be in their interest. Anyway, I wonder when the authenticity police will actually realize they are all dead, and that they should probably either quit, or actually speak to the so called victims of appropriation and ask them whether they feel appropriated.

Anyway, I like the idea that Lex was infact employed by Warp to create some clever inverse marketing strategy. Lex, you are a great writer - why do you have to drench all your polemics in some much cuntyness? Usually it just detracts from the valid arguments you are (sometimes) making.

Tell me about your mother.

I don't think someone actually has to know or say they've been exploited to have been exploited

Sure but doesn't that make the cunty assertions of journalists untestable?

One thing I don't get wrt "co-option" is how this hurts artists who get featured credits. There's nothing sneaky about the process, no unacknowledged biting of other scenes. Guest spots are a two-way street and the MCs on the FB record are reaching people they wouldn't otherwise have reached at this stage. Presumably they liked the beats (that makes one of us) and wanted to MC over them. I'm struggling to see why this is worse in principle than any other record that uses guest spots.

The interaction of artists with the theory-heavy realm of music critics is a tricky realm. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing -- once someone like FAQ responds to questions about motivation and artistic reckoning in an interview, or acknowledges any sort of philosophical stance it opens the door to legitimizing the kind of meta-critical analysis of lex's article. It'll happen regardless, but the more artists encourage or are even complacent in these meta narratives the more likely it is that this criticism of gulf between the music and the promise of whatever story has been cooked up will take place.

A few years ago I was at a public interview session between a journalist definitely engaged in the artistic narrative and a musician who was not having it and it was hilariously awkward. All of the questions implying a metatextual narrative fell flat when the answers were to the effect of "I like these sounds and I feel the images work well with it" when explaining a live performance.

I love the idea of stories about music but I think it's really a plague.

a whole series a malicious assertions about her contacts/friends/money/concepts which are unsubstantiated in the article.

What are these unsubstantiated assertions? It's not especially clear to me from FAQ's response, in fact she claims that "The article and its theory contain more contradictions than there is space to address", so it's difficult to figure out what's going on here.

Rereading Lex's piece, this seems to be the big assumption: "This art scene from which Future Brown emerged is one centred around its belief in cultural accelerationism – a kitsch sub-branch of Marxist philosophy that says “the only way to get over capital is through capital”." FB have never talked about that and the quote about the video, "an exercise in capitalist surrealism", comes from an art museum, not the band. It's guilt by association. The rest of the piece seems pretty watertight to me.

this seems like a far cry from Diplo-esque co-option. that would be more like sampling or emulating a regional style, selling it to a larger audience while giving little or no credit to the artists & culture that originated it, and then moving on to the next hot sound.

from what i know about FB's project it sounds a lot closer to the ethical way to do things (direct collaboration, etc).

Yes. Asking "Do you want to appear on our record with a featured artist credit?" doesn't sound like co-option to me. The dictionary definition says "to include someone in something, often against their will"

Diplo is zero-theory, no examination, "does it bang" imo. If it's danceable then he plays it out until he thinks it's not hot, then goes on to the next thing. Doesn't care about context or culture or w/e other than to the extent sounds from around the world are new territory to mine.

this seems like a far cry from Diplo-esque co-option. that would be more like sampling or emulating a regional style, selling it to a larger audience while giving little or no credit to the artists & culture that originated it, and then moving on to the next hot sound.

from what i know about FB's project it sounds a lot closer to the ethical way to do things (direct collaboration, etc).

― lil urbane (Jordan), Monday, 2 March 2015 16:40 (57 minutes ago) Permalink

sure, but end result of fb effort, to me, ends up coming off as 2015 exotica

or like mid 90s exotica with some 2015 engineering

maybe so (i still haven't listened to the LP), but that's a different criticism than appropriation.

x-post--so you don't believe in collaborations, or you think FB does too many, or the album sound is "exotica" to you merely because of utilizing the genres it does, in the manner it does?

xp hey man I just wandered into the thread wanting to post, I'm not really posting about anything being talked about

when I last posted about diplo here, I guess I just thought to myself that this would be a good thread to post the word diplo

haha

Rereading Lex's piece, this seems to be the big assumption: "This art scene from which Future Brown emerged is one centred around its belief in cultural accelerationism – a kitsch sub-branch of Marxist philosophy that says “the only way to get over capital is through capital”." FB have never talked about that and the quote about the video, "an exercise in capitalist surrealism", comes from an art museum, not the band. It's guilt by association. The rest of the piece seems pretty watertight to me.

Perhaps, but then FAQ's stuff has also been put out on Hyperdub by Steve Goodman, who was a student of Nick Land's at Warwick during the original CCRU accelerationist era. I'm sure FAQ is familiar that stuff, I don't know whether or not FB is explicitly supposed to be an accelerationist album as an authorial or artistic statement, but it can be easily read as such imo. And Lex does a decent job at quickly demonstrating that in his review.

she's had music put out on a number of labels and attributing that motive to her but not, say, the teklife guys seems suspect

I'm not saying Lex can't read it in that way, only that I can see why FAQ rejects that reading, because it's a supposition based on who she hangs out with rather than anything she's said.