morphing

I think this whole course has really been about the morphing of popular music in many directions, from past to present to futuristic, across genres, across cultures, races, genders and these have been a result of, as Sandywell and Beer mention, the hyper-commodification of popular culture and technological advances. This morphing doesn’t stop at music, the artists transform themselves, and technology changes the delivery of popular music. As a result of all of this, it also morphs peoples’ attitudes to these areas of the music industry.

Music, like fashion, has it’s cycles, and music of the past continuously makes a comeback through the remake. Take ‘Bridge over troubled water’ as an example, Simon & Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Cash, Clay Aiken and the list goes on. Seriously on. It morphs into different versions over time, in going through different singers it travels through races, cultures, and therefore through languages. There have been versions in Swedish, Finish, Chinese and French. The song also morphs through genres, jazz, rock, ballads, and so this song has been associated with so many artists.

The amalgamation of cultures around the world has been allowed by technology and the hyper-commodification of everything has encouraged cultures to adopt elements of other societies . Popular music is a very integral part of the way cultures have been morphed. The Idol phenomenon has transformed the way societies manufacture music, discover talent, endorse capitalism, and not only this, it has brought musical societies closer together. The technology that has allowed the ease of exchanging music across the globe has encouraged the morphing of musical styles, for example, Jay-Z remixed Panjabi MCs “Beware Of the Boys” morphing the Indian song with American rapping styles.

Idol has also morphed audience relations with reality TV, with entertainment capitalist culture and the manufacturing of stars. Idol as morphed the perception of the relationship between audiences and capitalist culture . Idol encourages the idea that consumers are manufacturing their own idols, actively participating in the creation or morphing of one of their own (the ordinary) into the extraordinary.

I think it's important to remember not only the ways in which musical culture is stylistically morphed, but also the way in which these changes have morphed society’s attitudes towards popular music.

Morphing relates to the live vs. the mediated as the blurring of these two grows stronger and has reached a point where hyper-mediacy has made it extremely difficult to even distinguish the two. Technology opens up the ways in which audiences are delivered music (live, digital, recorded live performances, records) and it therefore morphs audience attitudes to new media and the argument of authentic vs. inauthentic.