Popular Music, Power and Play

Reframing Creative Practice

Marshall Heiser

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781501362750
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music & Business

Once the domain of a privileged few, the art of record production is today within the reach of all. The rise of the ubiquitous DIY project studio and internet streaming have made it so. And while the creative possibilities available to everyday musicians are seemingly endless, so too are the multiskilling and project management challenges to be faced. In order to demystify the contemporary popular-music-making phenomenon, Marshall Heiser reassesses its myriad processes and wider sociocultural context through the lens of creativity studies, play theory and cultural psychology. This innovative new framework is grounded in a diverse array of creative-practice examples spanning the CBGBs music scene to the influence of technology upon modern-day music. First-hand interviews with Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads), Bill Bruford (King Crimson, Yes) and others whose work has influenced the way records are made today are also included. Popular Music, Power and Play is as thought provoking as it will be indispensable for scholars, practitioners and aficionados of popular music and the arts in general.

1

The frame

Two young men stand in a small laneway, peering through a display window at caged birds. The one on the right lights up a cigarette, turning to survey nondescript wording on two plain white columns straddling the pet shop entrance. Peering from behind sunglasses – despite the weather being overcast – the smoker tucks a matchbox into the right breast pocket of his suede jacket as he focuses on reading the signs’ text out aloud verbatim. Brandishing a gun-like raised left hand, he starts to play a game, his gaze alternating between each column as he hesitantly reshuffles select words into nonsense prose. With each new recombination, his confidence increases until, soon enough, he is gesturing emphatically, swinging his arms around and stamping his feet. Finally, grinning, laughing and swinging his body, he almost shouts out his (now fluid) improvisation, finishing off with a triumphant, mock ‘left hook’.

This example, featured in Martin Scorsese’s film No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, Part 2 (2005), reveals a young Bob Dylan playfully manipulating a mundane aspect of his immediate surroundings as might a bored child. This he does to provide stimulation lacking in his direct environment, as evidenced by his behaviour: his spontaneous, emphatic movements; the tone of his voice; his smile and laughter; his manifest joy. Dylan’s wordplay here – using limited, arbitrary material – provides valuable insight into the workings of his creative process at the time (mid-1960s). It is evidence that, had it been gathered in a more auspicious setting, might easily have been drowned out by the noise of extraneous detail.

Watching the clip, it is easy to imagine how Dylan might have approached shaping a lyric like ‘Tombstone Blues’ (1965e) some months earlier, invoking legendary figures from the biblical to the Jazz Age: only to then wring them through some sort of sardonic, blues kaleidoscope. Moreover, there is no reason why such spontaneous (combinatorial) play might not be applied to any musical or technological facet of record production imaginable. Indeed, self-confessed playful practitioners like Brian Eno and 10cc’s Godley and Creme have applied similar principles to any number of music-making scenarios, ranging from lifting the mood of group recording sessions to the disruption of predictable patterns inherent in music-technology design and clichéd popular-music tropes.

Play as a frame of mind

Play scholar Brian Sutton-Smith states that ‘to “play with something” means conceptually to frame it in another way’ (1979: 305). The playful reframing of experience is an ‘act of reversal, an exercise in autonomy’ (1979: 316) in which activity itself becomes a reward in its own right. It also challenges the usual contingencies of power, logically negating (or rather suspending) the usual framing classes and relations, allowing the expression of feelings and ideas that everyday frames might otherwise inhibit. Sutton-Smith’s ideas regarding play and reframing experience arose as an attempt to reconcile collective and individualistic understandings of play. Whether or not play occurs in a solitary or group context, he argues, it can be best understood as a performance: a quadralogue. That is, a communicational frame between a real or imagined (i) director(s) and (ii) spectator(s) is first set up, within which dramatic content (i.e. ‘the manipulation of excitement arousal through contrastive elements’ (1979: 300–1)) is supplied by actual or imagined (iii) actor(s) and (iv) co-actor(s). Although characteristics of the playframe must first be negotiated before any dramatic content can occur, it should be emphasized that both are intrinsic to play, with players oscillating in and out of the contrastive action and subsequent renegotiations of the terms of the frame.

The playful frame of mind has been linked by seminal studies to instances of improved creativity (notable examples include: Amabile 1996; Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi 1976; Getzels and Jackson 1962; Lieberman 1965, 1977; Tegano 1990; Torrance 1961; Truhon 1983; Wallach and Kogan 1965). It is described as a psychological ‘world apart’ wherein action is intrinsically motivated and an end-in-itself. Within such a zone, the concerns of the real world and one’s usual mundane values are somewhat distanced. Sutton-Smith goes on to note that in play, frames ‘not grounded in the usual material of natural and social life’ (1979: 317) still possess a coherent logic of their own and depend upon rules that are totally binding, albeit only temporarily so. Avner Ziv describes such frames as possessing a ‘local logic’:

Creative people have the ability to look beyond the obvious, to see relationships in unusual and new ways, and to be open and flexible. They are not prisoners of habitual ways of thinking. They can use novel approaches, and ‘local logic’ is quite acceptable to them in the appropriate frame of reference. Therefore, their intellectual processes are open to humor. (1984: 134)

Sutton-Smith’s concept of playframing has many possible applications within the sphere of creative practice in the arts. In this context, playframes can be defined as explicitly negotiated, proscriptive-in-origin frames, in which a playful (i.e. present-moment-orientated) attitude is encouraged within their temporary boundaries. The accompanying benefits for practitioners are cognitive, conative (motivational), affective (emotional) and social. In terms of cognition, play encourages divergent thinking so that logical alternatives are generated, even though doing so may not be strictly necessary (1979). Adopting a playful frame of mind results in a present-moment orientation (Apter 1982) whereby the motivation for instigating and sustaining creative action arises from genuine interest rather than external pressures or rewards (Amabile 1983). Physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard P. Feynman once commented that his best work stemmed unwittingly from playing with ideas without consideration for how they might find practical application: a process he desc ribed as effortless (Feynman, Leighton and Hutchings 1985).

While the affective quality of play is not exclusively positive, playfulness – an observable behaviour that may be present in instances of play – facilitates ‘psychological distancing’ (Hutt 1971; Lieberman 1977) and tolerance of ambiguity (Tegano 1990). Many highly creative individuals have acknowledged the importance of the playful frame of mind and cognitive spontaneity in their own work. Albert Einstein famously described his creative process as one of combinatorial play (Hadamard 1945). Arthur Koestler, similarly, likened creativity to an act of playful recombinations when he observed, ‘The creative act is not an act of creation in the sense of the Old Testament. It does not create something out of nothing; it uncovers, selects, re-shuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, skills. The more familiar the parts the more striking the new whole’ (1964: 120). In a longitudinal study of artist students, Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi (1976) asked students to choose from a set of objects and to make a still life drawing of those elements chosen. The students who showed a more playful orientation towards the task, who started out with a less concrete idea of what to do, allowing the composition to emerge from their toying with the various compositional elements, and who were willing to change direction or alter the work as it progressed were independently judged as producing work that was more novel and aesthetically pleasing.

Play empowers practitioners by offering the means by which they might challenge the status quo of their respective sociocultural milieu. As Sophie Alcock asserts, ‘The potentially subversive nature of both humour and playfulness invites their use as strategies for resistance’ (2006: 23). It can also help practitioners exert greater influence within their peer group. Simon Zagorski-Thomas, in his book The Musicology of Record Production (2014: 161), cites Goffman’s work on ‘dramaturgy’ as a useful framework for interpreting how team members might more effectively ‘play along’ with each other. Even in a solo context, play can be used to reframe situations in a manner that encourages the challenging of assumptions and limiting the noise of non-task-relevant information. Playframe negotiations can even be said to take place between humans and machines or instruments since – as Zagorski-Thomas (2014) and Zak (2010a) both point out – technological devices must be considered active partners in modern creative process, influencing how practitioners go about their work, and empowering and constraining action in equal measure.

Playframing by adults in a creative-practice context also promotes creative-risk taking and spontaneity, makes the delegation of roles and tasks a more transparent, less adversarial process and (where possible) matches current skill level to challenge so as to promote optimal experience. As will be demonstrated in Chapters 4 and 5, such playframes can take on the form of simple terms of engagement; constitute procedural, physical or software systems; or, be expressed as temporal or spatial zones, each with their own unique sets of totally binding rules, limitations and phenomenological flavour.

Opening the floodgates: Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’

Play is not the only form of expressive behaviour that relies upon novel frame making as a ‘fundamentally creative response to life’ (Sutton-Smith 1979: 319). The reframing of experience is also a key feature of art. Musician Frank Zappa has the following to say:

The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively – because, without this humble appliance, you can’t know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. . . . Anything can be music, but it doesn’t become music until someone wills it to be music, and the audience listening to it decides to perceive it as music. (1997: 196, bold emphasis in original)

The frame that art offers applies equally well to both product and process. In the latter case, it can be understood as a protective one. Just as in play, art provides a psychological buffer from the consequences of one’s actions and, in doing so, encourages cognitive flexibility and risk tasking. Music producer Brian Eno once reflected, ‘“Art is a net”, . . . “Art is safe”. . . . You’re creating a false world where you can afford to make mistakes’ (Tamm 1995: 21).

Play is not just about frame making; however, it is just as much about frame breaking (Sutton-Smith 1979). It is now just a hair over 100 years since Marcel Duchamp’s infamous piss-take on the art establishment the ‘readymade’ sculpture ‘Fountain’ (1917/1964) was first exhibited: in a manner. This seminal, playful work was a simple, but radical, reframing of an everyday object (a men’s porcelain urinal), reorientated on its side and elevated on a pedestal for consideration, if not reverence. As modern-art champion and photographer Alfred Stieglitz pointed out at the time, when viewed through eyes detached from notions of functionality or the Western art canon, it could be interpreted as a most aesthetically pleasing object. Not everybody in the modern-art world of the time agreed, however. Rather than contravene their charter by rejecting the work outright, the exhibition organizers who received it simply hid it behind a partition and hoped the problem would go away. Needless to say, it didn’t. If anything, Duchamp’s audacious offering not only challenged contemporary conceptions of what constitutes art, but it opened the floodgates (pardon the pun) for Surrealism, Pop art, Fluxus and Conceptual art: movements that took on the old art establishment with a sense of humour.

If ‘Fountain’ can be considered the Big Bang of twentieth-century art, then several aftershocks are also worthy of mention. While not as iconoclastic – if only by virtue of their chronology – three works from the fields of painting, music and dance/theatre (let’s call it kabarett) share with ‘Fountain’ the notion that a work of art or performance need only provide a physical or conceptual frame, with the content left to someone (or something) else. Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘White Painting’ (1951), John Cage’s ‘4’33”’ (1952) and Valeska Gert’s ‘Pause’ (c. 1920s) each present frames ranging from the physical to the temporal and corporeal. ‘White Painting’ is a collection of canvases painted white, with each of the five (single and multiple-panel) works designed as ‘receptive surfaces’. It was a concept not lost on composer John Cage, who described the paintings as ‘airports for lights, shadows and particles’ (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 2020). In fact, so impressed was Cage that, soon after, he published ‘4’33”’, a three-movement composition with a score directing the performer(s) to simply sit silently at their instrument(s) for its duration. ‘Pause’, which pre-dates both works by some thirty years, involved Gert striking a pose, arms stretched overhead, and holding it, motionless. Performed as an entr'acte in front of Berlin cinema-goers while the movie reels were changed, it was a shocking display even for those accustomed to Gert’s lively ‘grotesque burlesques’ that lampooned bourgeois society and celebrated ‘the ones who fell through the cracks’ through dance and mimicry (Gert 1931). Also a film actor of note, Gert later influenced punk rockers such as Nina Hagen in the 1970s. And yet, her work today remains relatively obscure, at least when compared to Rauschenberg and Cage’s oft-celebrated efforts. This may be due to her having been a woman (Goldwyn 2011). It may also stem from the fact that her performances occurred outside of a high-art context. Whatever the reason, she is deserving of greater recognition than she has thus far received for her contribution to the arts.

No discrimination, no information

Many of the mechanisms informing the playful reframing of experience can be explained using phenomenological interpretations of adult play, such as those proffered by Csikszentmihalyi (1979) and Apter (1991). Csikszentmihalyi explains: ‘Since what we experience is reality, as far as we are concerned, we can transform reality to the extent that we influence what happens in consciousness and thus free ourselves from the threats and blandishments of the outside world’ (1990: 20). This insight echoes Guilfords’ assertion, ‘No discrimination, no information’ (1975: 38). The ability to momentarily filter out the noise of information not congruent with immediate goals optimizes efficiency of mental effort. At best, a pleasurable state of mind emerges f...