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ok...gotta jump in on this one...
i wouldn't say that dj spooky or whomever is on the same level
as, say, yoyo ma. not even close. and virtuosity doesn't make one
any more or less of a musician. creating something out of nothing makes
you an artist or a creator. regarding music, creating sound out of silence
makes you a musician, silence being the total absense of what one will
ultimately go on to create...as in: the song isn't written yet, so it isn't
music...or something like that.
may i offer an analogy: john coltrane vs. dj
spooky
coltrane would be painting on a blank canvas with only the
colors within his technical range available. so he paints a picture.
dj spooky comes along and cuts the painting into tiny and not-so-tiny pieces
(along with multiple other paintings, as suits his fancy). he then
reassembles them to make a "new" creation. key word:
reassembles. he's not taking nothing and making something...rather, he's
just taking what's already there and rearranging it. if you take the frame
of your '88 toyota and put a honda hood, chevy doors, and a vw engine in/on it,
you haven't built a totally new car. you've just taken parts of
pre-existing cars and mushed them together so that perhaps it looks new, drives
differently, and gets better gas mileage but the parts still belonged to cars
that were already in existence.
sorry, it's a touchy subject for me. i'd be pretty angry
if i wrote a song and a dj cut it up and remixed it just to have them say "look
at this new song that i wrote"
as well, i'm a fan of dj spooky and john coltrane. but i
can't agree that they are capable of existing on the same musical
plane.
-jim
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