Night Ripper

Girl Talk - Night Ripper (2006)

We’re living in this remix culture. This is a time where any grade-school kid has a copy of Photoshop and can download a picture of George Bush and manipulate his face how they want and send it to their friends. And that’s just what they do. Well, more and more people have noticed a huge increase in the amount of people who just do remixes of songs. Every single Top 40 hit that comes on the radio, so many young kids are just grabbing it and doing a remix of it. The software is going to become more and more easy to use. It’s going to become more like Photoshop when it’s on every computer. Every single P. Diddy song that comes out, there’s going to be ten-year-old kids doing remixes and then putting them on the Internet.

But why is this good?

It’s good because it is, in essence, just free culture. Ideas impact data, manipulated and treated and passed along. I think it’s just great on a creative level that everyone is so involved with the music that they like…You don’t have to be a traditional musician. You get a lot of raw ideas and stuff from people outside of the box who haven’t taken guitar lessons their whole life. I just think it’s great for music.

- Gregg Gillis

Prosumer

Candice Breitz - King (A Portrait of Michael Jackson) (2005)

This work is based on a pretty simple premise: there are enough images and representations of superstars and celebrities in the world. Rather than creating more images of people who are already overrepresented, rather than literally making another image of a Madonna or a John Lennon, I wanted to reflect on the other side of the equation, on what goes into the making of celebrity.

The idea is to shift the focus away from those people who are usually perceived as creators so as to give some space, some room, to those people who absorb cultural products—whether it’s music or movies or whatever the case may be. And to think a little bit about what happens once music or a movie has been distributed: how it may get absorbed into the lives into the very being of the people who listen to it or watch it.

Even the most broadly distributed, most market-inflected music comes to have a very specific and local meaning for people according to where it is that they’re hearing it or at what moment in their life they’re hearing it. What goes hand in hand with the moment of reception is a dimension of personal translation.

In African and other oral cultures, this is how culture has traditionally functioned. In the absence of written culture, stories and histories were shared communally between performers and their audiences, giving rise to version after version, each new version surpassing the last as it incorporated the contributions and feedback of the audience, each new version layered with new details and twists as it was inflected through the collective. This was never thought of as copying or stealing or intellectual property theft but accepted as the natural way in which culture evolves and develops and moves forward. As each new layer of interpretation was painted onto the story or the song, it was enriched rather than depleted by those layers.

This process of making meaning may be more blatant in the practice of certain artists than it is in the practice of others. Artists who work with found footage, for example, blatantly reflect on the absorptive logic of the creative process. But I would argue that every work of art comes into being through a similar process, no matter how subtly. No artist works in a vacuum. Every artist reflects—consciously or not—on what has come before and what is happening parallel to his or her practice.

- Candice Breitz

Ravel - Pictures at an Exhibition

I. PROMENADE: Allegro giusto, nel modo russico, senza allegrezza, ma poco sostenuto

A stately stroll into the gallery, played by a solo trumpet, is the initial image. This opening theme will be heard in several guises throughout the suite, usually serving as the bridge between musical pictures. Once the trumpet’s pronouncement is complete, the other trumpets, horns, and tuba respond in an equally regal manner, the richness of the brass instruments blending to create an impressive wall of sound. This pattern of announce and respond is repeated several times as the movement unfolds. When the strings join, they add a tremendous elegance, building gradually to an expansive outburst, then pulling back as the excitement wanes. But it quickly rebuilds, heightened by glorious horn calls in the midst of the orchestra’s huge sound. A fabulous chorus featuring the brass instruments alone literally rumbles, preceding one final phrase played by the entire orchestra before the movement’s abrupt end.

II. GNOMUS: Vivo (1:39)

This portrait of a limping dwarf and his grotesque movements begins with the clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoons, contra-bassoon, violas, cellos, and basses in unison loudly blurting out an angry statement, followed immediately by the horns reacting and quickly fading away. The music seems to have trouble developing a flow; like the dwarf, its “movement” is jerky, starting and stopping, then coming to a complete halt.

A new theme, more steady but still jerky, begins featuring the flutes, oboes, and a hollow-sounding xylophone. It is haunting and creeps along deliberately, abruptly stopped by two nasty comments from the bass clarinet, bassoons, contrabassoon, horns, cellos, and basses. Mysterious sounds created by the celesta, clarinet, harp, first violins, and the violas and cellos sliding up and down their strings quietly mimic the new theme.

Slow and heavy are the key qualities as the wind instruments plod through each note, accentuated by the pounding of the bass drum, like the resounding steps of Bigfoot. The somewhat discordant sound of the winds only underlines the ugliness of this section. With each passing phrase the volume and intensity increase, eventually leading to a gripping eruption, straining to become wild. A loud clap, played by the wood block, stops everything until the bass clarinet quietly trills, restarting the mysterious theme with the xylophone. Two brassy, harsh blares from the horns, trumpets, trombones, and tuba launch a wicked race to the finish.

III. PROMENADE: Moderao commodo e con delicotezza (4:24)

It is time to stroll to another painting, and Mussorgsky returns to the first movement’s melody played initially by the horn, this time less powerful, more delicate and pensive. The oboe, clarinets, bassoon, and the flutes carry the melody for most of the movement joined only at the very end by the violins

IV. IL VECCHIO CASTELLO (THE OLD CASTLE): Andante (5:18)

Muted cellos introduce a sorrowful solo for the bassoons. The saxophone assumes the melody, its hollow tone eerier than the bassoons, languorous but not lethargic as it moves steadily, pushed by repeated notes in the cellos. The violins, also muted, stir the stillness before the oboe and saxophones share a strange, short duet.

The pace seems to slow down as the intensity diminishes until the flutes and clarinet take the lead and steadily restore the intensity. But this, too, fades away, leaving the bassoon quietly playing what had been the steady beat of the cellos introducing the muted violins. One last, sensuous saxophone solo shrouded in haze restates this movement’s main theme and fades away. The void is broken by a final cry from the saxophone, like a last gasp, that slowly dissipates.

V. PROMENADE Moderato non tanto, pesante (9:33)

The trumpet calls us to stroll to the next work joined by the lowest voices in the orchestra, cellos, basses, bass clarinet, bassoons, and contrabassoon, making this walk ponderous. When the upper strings and wind instruments are added, the mood brightens. The promenade stops suddenly and ends with a delicate three-note call.

VI. LES TUILERIES: Allegretto non troppo, capriccioso (10:00)

This delicate movement is a depiction of children and their governesses at play in The Tuileries, the famous Paris park. An octet of woodwinds starts out capriciously, the mood happy and light, especially in the passages given to the flutes and oboes. The violins change the melody and slow the pace. This section is fluid and a little quirky; an image of children playing a game of hide-and-seek is suggested. A single chime from the triangle restarts the woodwind octet and a repeat of the initial happy melody, followed by another abrupt ending.

VII. BYDLO: Sempre moderato pesante (11:10)

If you have ever wondered how a composer might portray an ox wagon with huge wheels, here’s your chance! Weight is the key, and the lower voices including the bassoons, contrabassoon, cellos, and basses accompany a tuba solo. While the tuba surprises with its melodic ability, the other instruments plod along relentlessly. When the violins, violas, and harp join, the mood lightens somewhat, but still has its restrained quality suggestive of prisoners marching, hopeful but most probably doomed. This steady march grows as more instruments are added, and when the snare drum joins, the feeling that this is a desperate death march becomes overwhelming.

Soon the march seems to move on, the sound growing softer, and the tuba resumes its sad melody, again plodding. One weak reprise by the muted, distant horn is heard, just before the movement ends, exhausted.

VIII. PROMENADE: Tranquillo (13:42)

Three flutes and two clarinets begin this tranquil reprise of the stroll music. They are replaced by the oboes and bassoons continuing this atmosphere of total calm. But there is a sudden mood swing, and the calm changes to strain and darkness. The melody stops, and this promenade ends with a short, giddy, final comment.

IX. BALLET DES POUSSINS DANS LES COQUES: Scherzino: Vivo leggiero (14:22)

Mussorgsky’s inspiration for this movement was a drawing of a scene from the ballet Trithy, oddly titled “Ballet of the Chickens in Their Shells.” The pace is fast as it scurries about, light and delicate, especially in the flutes and oboes. A sustained chord, sounding strangely like cartoon music, leads to a repeat of the movement’s first few seconds.

After the repeat the flutes and bassoons play a strange duet while the violins trill relentlessly, like chirping birds. Briefly the violins take the lead, but the unstoppable, annoying flutes reprise the movement’s opening, and the flutes, oboes, and piccolo chirpingly bring this “pecking” to an end.

X. SAMUEL GOLDENBERG UND SCHMUYLE: Andante (15:43)

There is no promenade before we encounter this depiction of a conversation between two Jewish men, one rich and one poor. The introduction is heavy, with a distinctly Slavic/Gypsy tone created by the strings, the English horn, clarinets, and bassoons, although it is the rich string sound that is predominant. A rapid-fire, sniping solo trumpet accompanied only by the oboes and clarinets contrasts with the somber opening. Sneering, the trumpet seems to be hurling insults while the horns add to the tension.

Angrily, the strings, clarinets, bassoons, and contrabassoon answer the trumpet. Now the weighty first theme and the sniping, rude second theme are heard together as the argument grows louder and continues until it is abruptly cut off. A new theme played by the oboes and first violins fills the silence; it is sullen and plaintive. Reminders of the argument crop up occasionally as this movement grinds to its conclusion.

XI. LIMOGESLE MARCHE: Allegretto vivo sempre scherzando (18:12)

Another argument, this one among women in a market, is the theme of this fast movement; from the outset the horns establish one voice, and the violins answer with another. (The violins may remind you of the “Pick a Little, Peck a Little” number from the show The Music Man.) The music is busy and flighty and seems to bounce around out of control. A sudden stop silences everyone, then the music resumes even more frantically, a truly wild scene filled with hysteria. A final race brings the argument to a screeching halt, and we are thrust directly into the next movement.

XII. CATACOMBAL SEPULCHRUM ROMANUM: Largo (19:32)

A startling change occurs as the flighty fight in the market is replaced by the ponderous reality of mortality and the catacombs. The source of this movement was a drawing of Hartmann himself exploring the Paris catacombs by the light of a lantern. The heavier instruments, primarily the trombones, tuba, and horns, solemnly announce our arrival at this hallowed burial area, The chords are sustained, swelling and receding like the music for a gothic horror movie. The only trace of light is provided by the solo trumpet and its forgiving melody slicing through the somber brass. But angrily the other brass instruments bring back the “horror movie” music. This attack quiets, and one final blast, leading to an eerie rumble from the tam-tam, ends the visit to the catacombs.

XIII. CUM MORTUIS IN LINGUA MORTUA: Andante non troppo, con lamento (21:30)

This movement bears the creepy heading “Speaking to the Dead in a Dead Language,” an image Mussorgsky conjured up by himself inspired by Hartmann’s creative spirit leading the composer to the skulls in the catacombs. He speaks to them and they slowly become illuminated from within, an interesting premise for a musical composition,

Extremely quiet, muted violins play a sustained chord introducing the oboes and English horn, who play a slowed-down variation of the original promenade theme. The violins, now joined by the violas, tremble while the bass clarinet, bassoons, contrabassoon, cellos, and basses take the melody from the oboes. The low, slow-moving voices combined with the shaky upper strings yield a creepy sound reminiscent of a graveyard scene in a horror movie.

Emerging from the haze, the oboe and clarinet begin to brighten the mood. The creepiness diminishes, replaced by tranquillity as the harp lightens the tone. One can almost see the dense fog rising, allowing the sun to shine through. Calm prevails, the movement ending softly with a sustained chord that just fades away.

XIV. LA CABANE DE BABA-YAGA SUR DES PATTES DE POULE: Allegro con brio, feroce (23:24)

There is no pause as we are catapulted into a ferocious attack highlighted by the timpani and bass drum. The Hartmann painting inspiring this movement was of a clock in the shape of the legendary Russian witch Baba-Yaga. The beginning starts and stops, seeming to build up energy, the strings, English horn, clarinets, and bassoons snapping out a series of gruff comments. Once the engine gets going, it sounds driven as if possessed, developing relentlessly until the trumpets cut through like the cavalry trying to gain control of a wild situation. But the other brass instruments angrily blare out sustained retorts and the orgiastic excitement continues unabated, eventually growing slower and heavier. Instruments drop out one by one until there is only a solo trumpet left playing a series of eight notes.

The flutes change the mood and begin a free-flowing, gossamer-like solo accompanied only by occasional comments from the bassoons and basses. Mystery abounds, especially when the tuba heavily burps its notes and the response is led by the celesta, xylophone, and harp. (This section may remind you of the music played during the witch’s-castle scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz.) As this creepy music fades away, an angular outburst from the flutes, piccolo, oboes, clarinets, xylophone, and violins abruptly snaps everything to attention. But the trembling cellos and basses, and an eerie single tam-tam crash, sap any remaining energy to reach a dead stop.

The silence is shattered by an angry interjection; this is just the first volley in a series of outbursts that reprise the section of the engine getting going. Steadily, with its vulgar blasts, the pace and intensity increase, and as before the trumpets try to cut through the wildness, but are overwhelmed by the witch’s power. The violins, screeching demonically, seem to fly up and down over their strings, ending the movement abruptly on a high note.

XV. LA GRANDE PORTE DE KIEV: Allegro allo breve. Maestoso. Con grandezza (26:42)

Without a pause between movements, the final impression begins; this time Mussorgsky drew his inspiration from an architectural design for a large gate in Kiev. The majestic melody, played loudly by the bassoons, contrabassoon, horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba, timpani, and bass drum, is reminiscent of the Promenade theme that began the work. Now, it is broad and overpowering, and when the rest of the orchestra joins in, led by the crashing cymbal, the sound is even bigger, a fitting musical portrait of the massive Russian structure it depicts.

A sudden quiet takes hold as the clarinets and bassoons play a prayer-like interlude, a tremendous contrast to the power preceding it and the explosion that follows it. Here the brass instruments dominate, while the flutes, oboes, harps, violins, and violas excitedly race through exhilarating passages. Another midphrase interruption silences this most recent eruption, replacing it with a reprise of the prayer-like calm provided by the clarinets and bassoons, with the flutes adding an angelic quality. As the interlude ends, a heavy plodding starts, the lower voices steadly alternating pulses as the second violins and violas rustle, quickening the pace, like a reawakening. The contrast of the flowing string phrases against the heavy plodding creates a bit of tension that begins to resolve when the flutes, piccolo, oboes, and clarinet sneak in. All of this leads to the reemergence of the melody, now more splendid, shining like the sun slowly coming out from behind clouds, growing brighter and brighter by the second.

As if what has already been heard was not powerful enough, there is yet another explosion with the full orchestra reprising the main theme, broader and more majestic than ever. The pace slows dramatically giving plenty of time to bask in the powerful radiance of the sound. One final quieting starts the final push to the end; gradually the sonic power rebuilds, instruments chiming in one by one until a huge explosion featuring the brass instruments takes hold. Unbelievably, the sound grows larger still in another eruption, as the tam-tam, drums, cymbals, and triangle, along with the rest of the orchestra, joyfully reach the final musical image of this stroll through the art gallery.

- Anthony Rudel

Concert Hall

everyone is in the best seat

- john cage

objects of beauty

While a common reaction to seeing a thing of beauty is to want to buy it, our real desire may be not so much to own what we find beautiful as to lay permanent claim to the inner qualities it embodies.

Owning such an object may help us realize our ambition of absorbing the virtues to which it alludes, but we ought not to presume that those virtues will automatically or effortlessly begin to rub off on us through tenure. Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.

What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.

- Alain de Botton

Standard Station

Born in 1937, Ed Ruscha was raised in Oklahoma City, and in 1956 moved to Los Angeles, California. There, he enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute, a school that provided training in both commercial and fine arts. Ruscha started gaining recognition in the late 1960s, particularly with his famous liquid words pictures. He was then associated with the Ferus Gallery group, along with Robert Irwin, Edward Moses, and Ken Price. Ruscha also worked with photography and produced a great number of photographic art books, most made in Southern California between 1963 and 1978. His oeuvre is regarded as one of the most significant artistic precedents of Conceptualism. Influenced by Pop art, he experimented with the new language and iconography of popular culture, and Standard Station is emblematic of the style he developed during the 1960s.

It depicts a typical American gasoline station, and uses only a few colors applied flatly to the canvas. In painting such a structured composition, with its striking architectural delineation, Ruscha enlivens what might otherwise be a banal scene. The painting is typically Pop in its melding of fine and graphic arts. Standard is the brand name, but here it is also a play on the standardization of modern culture and society. It also comments on the standardization of the image itself, which is streamlined and reproduced— Ruscha made a series of screen prints of this painting, now in the collections of several museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

- Stephen Farthing

Ed Ruscha - Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas (1963)

Asylum

“In that direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a Hatter: and in that direction,” waving the other paw, “lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.”

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here, mad. You’re mad.

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

- Lewis Carroll

smoke

the light of our cigarettes

went and came in the gloom:

it was dark in the little room.

dark, and then, in the dark,

sudden, a flash, a glow,

and a hand and a ring i know.

and then, through the dark, a flush

ruddy and vague, the grace

(a rose!) of her lyric face

- Arthur Symons

Out for a Drive (Part 1) - Bike-Messenger Land

So let’s get in the minivan. We will start downtown in an urban hipster zone; then we’ll cross the city boundary and find ourselves in a progressive suburb dominated by urban exiles who consider themselves city folks at heart but moved out to suburbia because they needed more space. Then, cruising along tree-lined avenues, we’ll head into the affluent inner-ring suburbs, those established old-line communities with doctors, lawyers, executives, and Brooks Brothers outlets. Then we’ll stumble farther out into the semi-residential, semi-industrial zones, home of the immigrants who service all those upper-middle-class doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. Then we’ll go into the heart of suburbia, the mid-ring, middle-class split-level and ranch-home suburbs, with their carports, driveway basketball hoops, and seasonal banners over the front doors. Finally, we’ll venture out into the new exurbs, with their big-box malls, their herds of SUVs, and their exit-ramp office parks.

Bike-Messenger Land

We could pick any sort of urban neighborhood to start our trek, but just for interest’s sake, let’s start at one of those hip bohemian neighborhoods, such as the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the U Street corridor in Washington, Clarksville in Austin, Silverlake in L.A., Little Five Points in Atlanta, Pioneer Square in Seattle, or Wicker Park in Chicago, where the free alternative weeklies are stacked in the entry vestibules of the coffeehouses, galleries, and indie film centers. As you know, the alternative weekly is the most conservative form of American journalism. You can go to just about any big city in the land and be pretty sure that the alternative weekly you find there will look exactly like the alternative weekly in the city you just left. There are the same concentrations of futon ads, enlightened vibrator-store ads, highly attitudinal film reviewers, scathingly left-wing political opinions, borderline psychotic personals, “News of the Weird” columns, investigative exposés of evil landlords, avant-garde comic strips, and white-on-black rock venue schedules announcing dates by local bands with carefully grating names like Crank Shaft, Gutbucket, Wumpscut, and The Dismemberment Plan.

You look at the pictures of the rockers near the concert reviews, and they have the same slouchy, hands-in-the-jeans pose that Roger Daltrey and Mick Jagger adopted forty years ago, because nothing ever changes in the land of the rebels.

If you walk around the downtown neighborhoods, you’re likely to find a stimulating mixture of low sexuality and high social concern. You’ll see penis-shaft party cakes in a storefront right next to the holistic antiglobalization cooperative thrift store plastered with “Free Tibet” posters. You’ll see vegan whole-grain enthusiasts who smoke Camels, and advertising copywriters on their way to LSAT prep. You’ll see transgendered tenants-rights activists with spiky Finnish hairstyles, heading from their Far Eastern aromatherapy sessions to loft-renovation seminars.

In these downtown urban neighborhoods, many people carry big strap-over-the-shoulder satchels; although they may be architectural assistants and audio engineers, they want you to think they are really bike messengers. They congregate at African bistros where El Salvadoran servers wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs serve Virginia Woolf wannabes Slovakian beer.

Many of the people on these blocks have dreadlock envy. Their compensatory follicle statement might be the pubic divot, that little triangular patch of hair some men let grow on their chins, or the Jewfro, the bushy hairstyle that curly-haired Jewish men get when they let their locks grow out. Other people establish their alternative identity with NoLogo brand sportswear, kitschier-than-thou home furnishings, thrift-shop fashionista undresses, conspicuously articulated po-mo social theories, or ostentatious displays of Martin Amis novels.

The point is to carefully nurture your art-school pretensions while still having a surprising amount of fun and possibly even making, a big load of money. It is not easy to do this while remaining hip, because one is likely to find that a friend has gone terminally Lilith (denoting an excessive love of sappy feminist folk music) while others have taken their minimalist retro-modern interior-design concepts to unacceptable extremes, failing to realize that no matter how interesting a statement it makes, nobody wants to lounge around a living room that looks like a Formica gulag.

Downtown urban hipsters tend to have edgy alternative politics, or at least some, Bennington College intellectual pretensions, and probably, the New Yorker’s disease—meaning that anything you might tell them, they already heard two weeks ago. You could walk up and tell them that the Messiah just came down from heaven and tapped you on the sholder and they would yawn and say they’ve been expecting that since last spring. But they are cool, and their neighborhoods are cool, and that counts for a lot.

We sort of take coolness for granted because it is so much around us. However, coolness is one of those pervasive and revolutionary constructs that America exports around the globe. Coolness is a magical state of grace, and as we take our drive through America, we will see that people congregate into communities not so much on the basis of class but on the basis of what ideal state they aspire to, and each ideal state creates its own cultural climate zone.

In the hippisie cool zone, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Lester Young, Billie Holliday, Jack Kerouac, James Dean, the Rat Pack, William Burroughs, Elvis Presley, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith, and Lou Reed never go out of style. Coolness is a displayed indifference to traditional measures of success. The cool person pretends not to be striving. He or she seems to be content, ironically detached from the normal status codes, and living on a rebellious plane high above them.

In the cool zone, people go down to move up. It’s cooler to be poor and damaged than wealthy and accomplished, which is why rich and beautiful supermodels stand around in bars trying to look like Sylvia Plath and the Methadone Sisters, with their post-hygiene hair, a red-rimmed, teary look around their eyes, their orange, just-escaped-from-the-mental-hospital blouses, and the sort of facial expression that suggests they’re about forty-five seconds away from a spectacularly successful suicide attempt.

In the cool zone’s nightclubs, you find people dressed and posed like slightly over-the-hill gay porn stars. You find that at the tippy-top of the status ladder, there are no lawyers, professors, or corporate executives but elite personal trainers, cutting-edge hairstylists, and powerful publicists: the aristocracy of the extremely shallow. Late at night in these neighborhoods, you find the Ameritrash, the club-happy, E-popping, pacifier-sucking people who live in a world of gold teeth caps, colorful scarf wear, body-conscious tailoring, ironic clip-on ties, gender-bending neovintage Boy George—inspired handbags, and green-apple flirtinis, which are alcoholic beverages so strong they qualify as a form of foreplay. In the cool zone, people are always hugging each other in the super-friendly European manner and talking knowledgeably about Cuban film festivals. People in the cool zone pretend to be unambitious and uninterested in the great uncool mass of middle Americans, but they are well aware of being powerful by example. Drawn by images of coolness, young people in different lands across the globe strive to throw off centuries of rigid convention in order to wear blue jeans.

Highly pierced social critics in downtown neighborhoods lament the spread of McDonald’s and Disney and the threat of American cultural imperialism. But in fact, American countercultural imperialism: the spread of rock and rap attitudes, tattoos, piercing, and the youth culture—has always been at least as powerful and destabilizing a force for other cultures. It vibrates out from these urban-hipster zones, with their multicultural Caribbean shawarma eateries, their all-night dance clubs with big-name DJs, and their Ian Schrager hotels, which are so Zen that if you turn on the water in one of the highly hip but shallow bathroom sinks, it bounces a cascade of water all over the front of your pants, making you look like you just wet yourself because you were so awed by your own persona.

Cities, which were once industrial zones and even manufacturing centers, have become specialty regions for the production of cool. Culture-based industries that require legions of sophisticated, creative, and stimulated workers—the sort of people who like to live in cities—have grown and grown. In hip urban neighborhoods, there are few kids, and those who are there are generally quite young (when the kids hit middle school, their families magically disappear).

Surrounding these hip young urban areas are neighborhoods with plenty of kids, but they tend to be disproportionately populated with poor people and members of minority and immigrant groups. They carry their own brand of cool. In fact, they define cool, but with few exceptions, they never get to cash in on it. So they are often trapped in no or low-income jobs, because it’s very hard to go from being a high school grad to being a senior editor at Details, no matter how objectively with-it you are, and most of the other jobs have fled the cities or disappeared.

Cities have made a comeback of late, because the world demands cool products and ideas, but as Joel Kotkin concludes in The New Geography, they will not come back and be, as they once were, the main arenas of national life. “Rather than recovering their place as the geographic centers of the entire economy,” Kotkin writes, “city centers are readjusting themselves to a more modest but sustainable role based on the same economic and cultural niches that have been performed by the core from the beginning of civilization”—as generation centers of art, design, publishing, entertainment, and cool.

- David Brooks

Postcolonial Music

Youssou N’Dour (1959—) is one of a handful number of nonwestern pop stars from the African continent born around or after the independence of their homeland. N’Dour sings many of the typical stories of those who are trying to be subjects of modernity and not its objects: stories about the dangers of being overrun by tourism, the degradation of the environment, moving from the country to the city, and nostalgia for the ancestors and their wisdom. This modernization, however, in the form of the colonial machine, left N’Dour and his fellow Senegalese few options. The stories of modernization and colonialism intersect in his music.

N’Dour expresses the desire to make a new popular music that incorporates elements of indigenous traditional music while using the local language. At the same time, N’Dour acknowledges the influence of music from around the world on him. “It’s just a natural process of evolution”. “My style evolves depending on what other music I’ve heard.”

N’Dour is a Muslim but his music and lyrics have not taken on specifically Islamic issues. But his music is still informed by a strong sense of right and wrong. The idea of “propriety” recurs throughout his songs, which exhorts youths to behave respectfully towards their parents, cautions the west to behave respectfully towards its former colonies, and asks tourists to treat his country well.

In “Xale” (Our Young People), he tries to project a vision for the youth of the African continent:

Xale (Our Young People)

Young people of our country

This is how I see it

Let’s start by asking Cod

To accept our prayers

To bless all our endeavors

To shield us from the Devil

Who conspires to make us doubt

Who tries to change our ideas

And to divide us

We must come together and show everyone

What we can do

That we can be the backbone

Of our country

We will benefit by talking things over

With our parents

But we must contribute our own ideas

Those of us who are in Senegal

And those of us who are abroad

Can all make an effort?

Where am I with my guys?

Well I think we are doing our bit

We all need to work together

For the future of our country.

Hey, I’m certainly not forgetting you

N’Dour says about “Xale” that “it’s a question of reflecting and showing a different image; to be credible; able to work hand in hand to achieve the development of our continent, our country. It’s a song to stimulate consciousness and a call for the union of our youth for a new vision.” The music is the most serious he has written in its use of a nearly “classical” sound: his band, Super Etoile de Dakar sits out, so it is all guest strings, giving “Xale” the sound of a string quartet. It is sober music, both in content and in form.

- Timothy Taylor