justira

Part of the Song a Day Project! Also part of Transformative Songs Week in honour of the OTW March Drive.

Oratory well done has a cadence and rhythm that makes it beautiful and compelling — musical. The strong musical and lyrical flow of good oratory is one of the ways it appeals to us and moves us.

And then someone takes a speech and transforms it into something... more. There are other instances of this practice, but today I want to show one of my favourites: Winston Churchill's Great Declaration in 1941 (one fine, fine piece of rhetoric) backed by a few wayward time travellers. As with the Disney-derived techno remix I started this week is, I love the unexpected quality of it, strongly contextualizing a piece of our cultural history in the present.


Youtube Link: The Gregory Brothers - Lift Up Your Hearts.

Lift up your hearts
All will come right
Out of the depths
Of sorrow and of sacrifice
Will be born again the glory of mankind


( Pieces used in arrangement after the cut )

When we interact with our culture and cultural output in transformative ways, we transform the source, we transform ourselves, and we transform our culture. And we get Winston Churchill with time travelling musicians.

And this is another reason I support the OTW.

Part of the Song a Day Project! Also part of Transformative Songs Week in honour of the OTW March Drive.

Another approach to combining source works is the mashup, which often take the form of vocals from one piece together with the instrumental track of another (though many variations exist!). Today's mashup mixes the vocals from Metallica's Enter Sandman with the instrumental from Bryan Adams' Run to You. Particularly given Metallica's history with copyright enforcement, it's interesting to see people interacting with their output and producing something new and different out of the combination.

Youtube Link: Wax Audio - Enter You.


( Pieces used in arrangement after the cut )

Mixing and remixing works like this, creating something new by interacting with our culture and combining works — this is another reason I support the OTW.

Part of the Song a Day Project! Also part of Transformative Songs Week in honour of the OTW March Drive.

While works in the public domain are most commonly and easily adapted, the art of the cover is alive and well. Many covers consciously try to stay within the genre, style, and overall feel of the source work while just giving it the unique touch of the cover artist, a time-honoured and valuable practice. But there are also many covers that take a source work and do something pretty... different with it.

One such is the Da Vinci's Notebook cover of Stuck In The Middle With You, which takes the original by Stealers Wheel (itself a parody of Bob Dylan's work) and redoes it entirely in DVN's distinctive comedic, upbeat a capella style.

But there's a specific subclass of this style of cover that I'd like to highlight: taking songs originally performed by or in a style associated with US Black musical artists and styles, and consciously subverting the source work by putting them in what's perceived as a culturally diametrically opposed style (usually something with White associations). There's a lot going on in this practice — it's appropriative (aggressively so!) and problematic — but in many cases it's also a very conscious commentary on race, class, misogyny, and other concepts.

One such is Jonathan Coulton's cover of Baby Got Back (there's a studio version but I like the live one better, where you can see Coulton's reactions and opinions, as well as the audience participation), original by Sir Mix-a-Lot (itself cultural commentary! "she's just so.... black!"). But the one I really want to feature today is the Dynamite Hack cover of Boyz In The Hood, the source originally by Eazy-E and styled Boyz-N-The-Hood. This is definitely best listened to while also watching the vid, so do that if you can to get the maximum on the conscious commentary angle. I do want to warn for some language and violent imagery in the lyrics (totally played with in the corresponding parts of the video).

Youtube Link: Dynamite Hack - Boyz In The Hood.


( Lyrics after the cut )

This is problematic — but it's undeniably transformative and a very interesting snapshot of some complicated interactions in our culture. And this is another reason I support the OTW.

Part of the Song a Day Project! Also part of Transformative Songs Week!

So hey, it's the March Drive at the OTW, and this seemed like a good time to feature some transformative works as songs!

I really love this remix — it's unexpected (especially in terms of historical periods associated with the source material versus the remix), it gives a new way of looking at the source material, it builds something unique and lovely out of existing cultural output.

But one of the other reasons I wanted to feature this work is that Disney is pretty much one of the biggest reasons that copyright law is the way it is in the US. So here's for pondering: the juxtaposition between this lovely transformative work, and the sociopolitical context in which it's made.

Youtube Link: Pogo - Wishery



Transformative works are legitimate. And beautiful. And that is one reason why I support the OTW.