Greg: I’ve been listening to 808s and Heartbreak and Twisted Fantasy. I’m really enjoying them. Far more than I thought I would. I think Auto-tune here is somehow protective for Kanye when he is expressing emotion in a genre where that is not really smiled on. I haven’t quite put my finger on it, but I think the dehumanizing of the human voice is somehow a foil for the expression of inner turmoil. It’s haunting.

Ethan: Yes! Absolutely. The Auto-tune gives Ye a way to be the sensitive, vulnerable singer, as opposed to the swaggering rapper. And I like the similar sonic palettes between 808s and Fantasy, except 808s is sparse and Fantasy is full. And the thing of using tuned 808 kick drums to play the basslines is so hip.

Greg: The hard part for me to wrap my head around is the fact that Auto-tune is a filter, a dehumanizer, and it manages to make Kanye both closer and more human.

Ethan: I have a broader philosophical idea brewing about the concepts of “dehumanizing” and “posthuman” and how they’re really kind of meaningless, at least as applied to music. How can things that humans create be dehumanizing? Everyone involved in the production of Kanye’s albums is human. Auto-tune is a novel way of sounding human, but it’s still human, just like the sound of reverb or EQ or compression.

Greg: Yes — I have similar issues with natural vs. unnatural in general. Humans are natural, therefore everything we do is also natural.

Ethan: I’ve been listening a lot to “No Church In The Wild,” the opening track from Watch The Throne.

Kanye doesn’t use any Auto-tune, he just raps. The interesting thing is that the chorus is sung by Frank Ocean, who’s a perfectly capable legit R&B singer, and they put him through the full Cher effect. At the end of each verse, Kanye and Jay-Z tell Frank to “preach” through the Auto-tune. Curious as to your reaction.

Greg: This track is really something. The animal noises fusing with human with street noise. The bizarre outro — WTF is that? The Auto-tune section kind of hides structurally, in some ways. If the liner notes are to be believed, then the Auto-tune section is actually The-Dream on vocals. [Ethan note: it is Frank Ocean singing; The-Dream co-wrote the song.] The extreme EQ of that section is key, though. The dropping to low frequency moves the preceding music into the far distance and down into the horizon. In some ways it heightens the internal effect in an almost cinematic way. It’s a radical emotional zoom and pan. The fact that it is also Auto-tuned may relate to what we were talking about on Kanye’s earlier albums. The sense that Auto-tune allows for and maybe heightens emotional expression. One would think that it is despite the dehumanization, but maybe the dehumanization allows for the words themselves to become more present? I’m not sure. I’ll keep listening.

Ethan: There’s a tradition in hip-hop that if you have an instrumental that isn’t going to get turned into a full song, you append it to the beginning or end of another track. But usually it’s a funk sample or something, not a weird classical piece.

Greg: It reminds me of the Fiona Apple cover of “Extraordinary Machine” for some reason. It’s flat weird.

Ethan: I don’t know that Fiona Apple song, will have to check it out.

Greg: it’s a Marilyn Monroe cover, of all things.

Greg: Funny that delay is not corny, but reverb is? What’s that about?

Ethan: I think the thing with delay is that it’s technologically newer — tape delay goes back a ways, but tempo-synced digital delay is still pretty fresh and of the present. Also, reverb diffuses the sound, and delay keeps everything nice and crisp. Good point about how the EQ spatializes the track — reverb is considered corny by current pop and hip-hop producers, so either you leave everything bone dry or use delay and EQ for spatial effects.

Maybe the Auto-tune heightens emotion by making the melody totally unambiguous. It gives the sung notes an organ-like clarity and distinctness, and slight pitch nuances get exaggerated into stairsteps and warbles. Also, the filter changes the voice’s upper partials in odd ways that adds to the pathos. The-Dream has done some nice Auto-tune singing on other Kanye material — there’s a song called “Flight School” that I have on a mixtape or something. But it’s nowhere near as hip as “No Church.”

Greg: I’m digging “Made in America” as well. The tone is so unapologetic. How often does “banana pudding” show up in rap? It’s unsettlingly positive in some ways. Nostalgic and wistful. Where’s the Auto-tune?

I was teaching John Adams‘ “On the Transmigration of Souls” today and I noticed some distortion on some of the sampled voices. It’s utterly unnecessary but clearly present. I realized that this is related to our discussion of Auto-tune and filters on the voice. My thought in class was: “Do we live so scared that a naked voice is a thing that can’t speak truth?” I’m not sure I still stand by this sentiment, but there it is.

Ethan: I’ll catch myself putting delay on everything as a matter of course. It takes a lot of discipline to leave things dry. I saw this movie called Jiro Dreams Of Sushi about Japan’s best (and most expensive) sushi chef. All he does is cut fish, put it on rice, add some soy sauce and serve. But he uses the best fish, the best rice, the best soy sauce, the best sequencing of dishes, etc. I like that philosophy of getting good ingredients and not processing them at all.

Guberman divides the history of recorded music into two distinct sections: the fidelity era, stretching from Thomas Edison through the invention of the compact disk, and the post-fidelity era, beginning with the iPod. He argues that, since about 2001, the listening public has come to value convenience, variety, personalization and curation over sound quality.

An emblematic image of the late fidelity era: the Maxell advertisement showing a wealthy young man in his home, sitting deep in an easy chair with a martini, getting physically blown away by giant, powerful speakers.

The emblematic image of the post-fidelity era: silhoutted people of both genders and diverse backgrounds, dancing with iPods.

During the fidelity era, publications and advertisements focused on the “realness” of recording media and playback. High-end stereo equipment became steadily more elaborate and expensive in the pursuit of ever-better clarity and dynamic range. Even the Walkman was initially promoted in terms of its sound quality. Guberman cites a 1980 New York Times article rhapsodizing about the “astonishing . . . fact that a pocket-size set plays true stereo sound with stereo-separation.” By the end of the twentieth century, though, even the most exacting audiophiles were no longer expecting much in the way of further improvements in recording or playback fidelity. While the compact disk was initially presented and marketed for its clarity of sound, its real selling point quickly became convenience: the ability to skip tracks, not having to flip records, not needing to replace needles and so on.

The MP3 format did not immediately challenge the values of audiophiles. The format was a technical curiosity mostly of interest to computer enthusiasts, and the first generation of portable players were considered geeky toys, not serious listening devices. When the iPod was first introduced, it was not met with much enthusiasm. The iPod was relatively expensive, worked with Macintosh computers only, and did not boast any major technological advantages. Certainly, no audiophile would have predicted that it meant the beginning of the end of fidelity culture. But the iPod’s attractive visual aesthetic and remarkably simple user interface helped bring MP3s into the mainstream.

In the past ten years, the iPod and devices like it have changed our relationship to recorded music. We now expect that we can carry a vast quantity of music wherever we go, that we can create playlists at will, and that we can access our libraries via intuitive and attractive interfaces. Furthermore, MP3 software and players introduced the shuffle feature. Some CD players were able to shuffle the tracks on a single disk, but the ability to randomly play from among hundreds or thousands of songs is another qualitative experience entirely. Fidelity has been so completely overtaken by convenience and variety that, as Guberman points out, CDs are frequently purchased just to be converted into MP3 files. Furthermore, elaborate and expensive home stereo systems that might once have centered around a high-end turntable and amplifier are now designed specifically for MP3 playback.

Record companies have been slow to embrace the post-fidelity mindset. They worked to stem the tide of MP3s while pouring resources into higher-end digital formats like the SACD and DVD-A. As recently as five years ago, I was employed to write marketing copy for these formats, and it was difficult to muster an enthusiastic tone for products I knew were of interest to almost no one. Technology companies like Apple and Amazon have been the beneficiaries of post-fidelity culture, while the record labels are in a tailspin.

Today, the audiophile community has largely been subsumed by the home theater and hardcore gamer communities. While these groups value good sound, they also value picture, engaging content, the physical appearance of their gear and various other considerations. Guberman cites the prevalence of speakers designed more for aesthetics than functionality, like the tall, slender towers popular in home theaters setups. He further notes that, even among audiophiles, discussions tend to center around actual music, rather than the technology used to play it back. He surveys the Audioholics forum and finds that “[t]he most popular discussion threads include ‘best female voice,’ ‘best male voice,’ and ‘20 albums you should own but probably don’t.’ All of these involve users recommending albums to each other for various reasons, rarely mentioning the sound quality. Instead users try to describe the appeal of the music itself.” This is for the best. Music technology exists to convey music, and it’s healthier to focus on the music than the technology for its own sake.

Even the MP3 does not represent the lowest-fidelity music experience. That distinction goes to the increasingly common practice of listening to music with the small, low-quality speakers in laptops, tablets and even cell phones. If you’ve taken public transportation in a major city in the past ten years, you’ve probably heard teenagers playing music for each other from their phones. The UK has a slang term for this practice: sodcasting (with sod meaning “inconsiderate jerk.”) This behavior is considered a nuisance by most non-adolescents, and in 2006, London mayor Ken Livingstone went so far as to call for a sodcasting ban. But social music sharing is a fundamental part of our social life, and we should expect kids to do it with whatever tools are at hand. Some scholars take a more positive view of sodcasting, which  technomusicologist Wayne Marshall terms “treble culture.”

Guberman observes that while we have lost something in the post-fidelity era, we have gained much from the access of vast digital music databases. When searching an online store or file-sharing site for a particular song, we serendipitously encounter other songs that happen to share a word their titles. Guberman gives the example of a search that turns up both Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and Blue Öyster Cult. This kind of effortless, semi-random encounter has been a source of inspiration for the current generation of musicians. For example, the wildly eclectic singer-songwriter Janelle Monáe has said specifically that she wants her albums to create the sensation of an iPod on shuffle.

Post-fidelity culture impacts the sonic qualities of contemporary pop as well. Smart producers recognize that their work will likely be heard in less-than-optimal listening conditions, and adjust their process accordingly. Hip-hop producers in particular design their mixes for real-life listening: in cars and clubs, and on noisy streets, buses and trains. In the 1990s, Los Angeles hip-hop producers were already in the habit of listening to mixes in progress in the car. Current pop and dance music favors fat synthesized bass sounds and kick drums with a lot of overtones. These sounds work well on tiny speakers, because the upper harmonics supply enough information that the listener can fill in the lower ones mentally. Similarly, high-pitched, crisp synthesizers bracketed by abrupt silences cut well through noise and poor speakers. By keeping the midrange relatively empty, producers can design their music to coexist with engine noise, people talking, humming air conditioners and fans, airplanes and all the other noise pollution we find ourselves immersed in. Music of the high-fidelity era fares poorly in such conditions.

Like most technological changes, post-fidelity culture brings both losses and gains. Consider again the two advertisements. The Maxell guy in the fidelity era has great sound, but he enjoys it alone in his home (aside from his butler.) The post-fidelity iPod people are dancing in a social context. Audiophiles lament the MP3 and treble culture, but these developments facilitate the social sharing and connection that is music’s true purpose.

Chapman examines the impact that Timbaland has had on popular music production, and what his significance is to the broader culture. While Timbaland himself is no longer the tastemaker he was at his peak ten or fifteen years ago, his sonic palette has become commonplace throughout the global pop landscape.

The first generation of hip-hop producers built tracks around samples of vinyl funk, soul and jazz albums. These samples were imbued with all the sonic ambiance of 1960s and 1970s recording: warm-sounding equalization, reverb, analog compression, and all the small performative imperfections resulting from people playing live in a room. Timbaland uses such samples too, but very rarely. He typically builds his tracks “from scratch,” using drum machines and synthesizers. Timbaland favors the highly artificial sound of the Roland TR-808 and other synthesized percussion sounds. He pairs these sounds with otherworldly synthesizer pads and out-of-context ethnic sounds. For example, in “Get Ur Freak On,” a track he produced for Missy Elliot, Timbaland mixes koto, a tabla beat, a droning synths and American-sounding kick drums and rimshots, a combination that places the song everywhere and nowhere. He adds to the placelessness by dropping in some meaningless snippets of speech in Japanese and Hindi.

Chapman aptly describes Timbaland’s sound as “two-dimensional.” The sounds are bone-dry, without reverb, delay, or any of the other usual methods for giving music a sense of space. Also, there is no extraneous between-note noise; Timbaland’s tracks use a backdrop of total silence. When I was learning Pro Tools, I was urged several times never to allow any silence — to avoid “digital black.” Empty spaces in digital recordings are customarily filled with ambient noise to create the illusion of a continuous recording made by humans in a physical place. Timbaland violates this custom, makes conspicuous use of digital black. The spaces between the beats and fragmented samples are startlingly empty. Furthermore, the spaces are precise enough in their arrangement and duration to be crucial rhythmic elements in their own right.

There is widespread anxiety in the popular music world about the “artificiality” of digital production techniques. Even musicians who make extensive use of software synthesizers, quantization, Auto-tune and the like are often anxious to conceal that fact. In the rock world in particular, significant effort goes into making digital recordings sound “real.” Timbaland is afflicted with no such cognitive dissonance. He puts his techniques’ “fakeness” front and center, even in his treatment of vocalists. The chorus of “Work It,” one of his biggest hits with Missy Elliot, centers around backward-masked lyrics, the least “real-world” sound imaginable. Yet millions of  fans have embraced Timbaland’s seemingly cold and inhuman style, and his songs are a reliable way to get a dance floor moving. How can this be?

Chapman’s assessment is that Timbaland is giving musical voice to the contemporary condition using Paul Virilio’s concept of “telepresence,” which he describes as

the radical realignment of social relations catalyzed by the widespread use of contemporary communication technologies. The notion of telepresence invites us to think about the ramifications of a world in which the privatized virtual space of electronic communication comes to replace the face-to-face interactions that have historically constituted the public sphere… [T]elepresence might serve as a useful analogy for a production aesthetic that, in its evocation of a two- dimensional sonic environment, reinforces the retreat of R&B and rap lyrics from the domain of public interaction to a virtual non-place of private enjoyment.

Chapman finds the “flat, uninflected sonic space of post-Timbaland rap and R&B” to be anti-humanist, lacking interior depth or emotional experience beyond the confines of the body.

As Virilio argues with respect to telepresence, virtuality fundamentally reorders the relationship between near and distant, bringing together private nodes of communication in the same moment that it severs its ties from the local and the public…We must be wary of a posthuman that is so eager to celebrate virtual space that it neglects the accelerating deterioration of concrete space and the bodies that occupy it.

I do not share Chapman’s anxiety. The internet has hardly replaced face-to-face interaction. Our mutual alienation in the posthuman world is a symptom of apartment and suburban living, long working hours in tightly controlled settings, a mobile population and many other social forces that work against communal and familial relationships. The internet goes a long way toward reducing our isolation.

If high-tech dislocation is a fact of our lives, it’s only natural that we would embrace music that speaks to our experience. Timbaland’s music may be conspicuously digital, but it is rarely cold or bleak. If it motivates us to gather together and dance, I see no reason to be suspicious of its supposed unreality or anti-humanism. What could be more warmly human than social dance?

Before “Believe,” Auto-tune was used for its intended purpose: to correct vocal performances in a natural-sounding, transparent way. Cher’s producers Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling discovered that if they turned the Retune Speed setting to zero, it produced the futuristic robot sound we’ve all come to know well. Since they were producing a high-tech dance track, they figured that the robot sound fit the mood, so they kept it in.

I doubt that Taylor and Rawling were the first people to discover the zero retune speed setting, but they were the first to use it on a mass-market commercial recording. To keep other people from imitating the sound, they told interviewers that they had achieved the effect with a vocoder. The music press repeated their story endlessly, so to this day there’s widespread confusion about the difference between vocoder and Auto-tune.

Original question on Quora

Jazz was popular when it was intimately connected to popular culture. In the early-middle part of the twentieth century, jazz was popular culture. The last significant jazz work to really communicate with pop music was “Rockit” by Herbie Hancock.

That song was informed by hip-hop and electronica, but it also gave something back — a generation of hip-hop turntablists all point to it as a central inspiration. Jazz since then has mostly tried to ignore pop culture entirely, or comment on it condescendingly.

Most jazz being produced now isn’t popular because it isn’t that good. It’s plenty complex and intellectual, but complexity isn’t coextensive with quality. People don’t listen to music to be dazzled by technique unless they’re in music school. It’s a rare contemporary jazz musician who can write a melody you’d want to hear more than once, and listening to people run difficult changes is about as interesting as watching them play video games.

In order for jazz to be popular, it needs to humble itself before the major improvisational art form of this generation: hip-hop. Jazz snobs that belittle hip-hop’s simplicity are missing the point. What hip-hop loses in harmony and melody, it more than makes up for in sonic innovation, wordplay, social realism and a sense of fun. Remember when jazz was fun? Remember when you could dance to it? Remember when it spoke to the emotional reality that most people live in? Or any emotional reality? That’s what jazz needs.

Here are two suggested directions for the future:

Verve Remixed

This series produced some excellent electronic music in its own right, brought a bunch of classic recordings to a whole new set of years, and opened a lot of jazz fans’ ears to contemporary music. Quite an achievement! I wish every jazz label would fling the vaults open to remixers, and not just the pros. I remix jazz tunes anyway, but it would be nice to have the labels’ blessing, rather than having to watch my back for lawsuits.

Reggie Watts

Even though he’s supposedly a comedian, Reggie Watts comes closer to the real spirit of jazz than any contemporary jazz musician I can think of. His songs are completely improvised, but rather than sounding like free-jazz mush, they’re tightly structured, catchy and funny. Instead of trying to sound like it’s still 1959, I wish more jazz musicians could live in the present culture like Reggie does.

Original post on Quora

The Facebook page lists about eleven billion examples of The Lick. Here are some of my favorites.

Miles Davis, “Two Bass Hit” — John Coltrane plays it at 1:15 and 1:39.

John Coltrane, “Impressions” — listen at 3:11.

Coltrane again, “On Green Dolphin Street,” at 1:32.

Freddie Hubbard playing “A Love Supreme” at a Coltrane tribute concert — 0:16.

Sonny Rollins on Miles Davis’ “It’s Only A Paper Moon” at 2:25.

Sonny Rollins, “John S” at 1:51.

Grant Green, “Nomad” — Bobby Hutcherson plays The Lick at 4:12, 4:46 and 4:53.

Charles Mingus, “Peggy’s Blue Skylight” — Joe Gardner at 1:34.

The Lick doesn’t just belong to jazz. Stravinsky uses it in “The Fire Bird” — listen at 14:43.

The Lick is a pop and rock staple too. Player uses a variant of it in “Baby Come Back” — listen at 0:13.

Santana plays yet another variant in “Oye Como Va” — listen at 0:17.

Akon sings The Lick right at the beginning of “Just A Man.”

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of four versions of The Lick, all transposed to A minor for clarity.

These few variations on The Lick only hint at the richness of explosive diversity you can find on the Facebook page. The Lick is one of those musical memes, like the Amen break or the “Egyptian” melody, that can adapt itself to a seemingly limitless variety of circumstances. There’s a lot of debate on FB about whether a given phrase counts as The Lick or not, since many of the examples stretch the time or alter the pitches, or both. These debates are a lot like the ones biologists get into around taxonomic issues, whether a given fossil is a dinosaur or a bird. The Lick mutates and evolves exactly like a gene in a population of organisms. You can think of The Lick as being like a single gene that codes for a single protein, functioning as part of a larger musical genome, a tune or a solo.

We come down hard on artists who use cliches too much, and praise others for originality. But if iconoclastic musicians on the level of Coltrane use The Lick so heavily, how bad can cliches be? Too much originality is an obstacle to creating emotionally resonant music. Coltrane’s last albums were by far his most original — you’re not going to hear too many cliches on Ascension or Sun Ship. But I find those albums challenging at best, and most people find them unbearable. Coltrane’s best art is based on familiar materials — showtunes, folk music, the blues. The best art doesn’t avoid cliches; it owns them, personalizes them and transforms them. I say, long live The Lick.

I’ve always wondered where the Egyptian melody came from. It turns out to be hundreds of years of old, and goes by many different names. You can find an excellent capsule history of it in William Benzon’s book Beethoven’s Anvil. The context is a discussion of a Louis Armstrong recording from 1928 called “Tight Like This.” Listen at 2:04 as Louis quotes the “Egyptian” melody and varies it a few times.

Benzon knows the Egyptian melody from childhood. He quotes different sets of lyrics, such as:

All the girls in France do the hokey pokey dance,
and the way they shake is enough to kill a snake

Another variation:

On the planet Mars all the women smoke cigars.
Every puff they take is enough to kill a snake.
When the snake is dead they put flowers on its head.
When the flowers die they say 1969!

The tune has been known in America as the “hookie-kookie dance” or the “hoochie-coochie dance.” It came to fame when it accompanied a belly dancer at the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, and afterwards it became something of a hit. The melody was copyrighted under various names early in the 20th century, including “Dance Of The Midway,” “Coochi-Coochi Polka” and “The Streets Of Cairo.” (Thank you, Eunji Choi, for pointing me to this last tune’s Wikipedia page.)

The Egyptian melody appears in the widely-studied Arban’s Complete Conservatory Method For Trumpet from 1864, under the title “Arabian Song.” Arban almost certainly didn’t write it; it’s one of many “representative ethnic songs” in the book learned from the folk tradition. The tune is related to an Arabic or Algerian melody called “Kradoutja” that had been circulating around France since the 1600s. Who knows if the tune in Arban’s book is an actual middle eastern folk song, or a European mutation of “Kradoutja,” or what.

The Egyptian melody also gets quoted a lot in performances of “Sheik of Araby,” for example as performed here by the Beatles for their unsuccessful Decca audition in 1962.

Steve Martin uses the melody at the beginning of “King Tut.” (no embedding.)

They Might Be Giants use the tune in “Istanbul” for the line “Even old New York was once New Amsterdam.”

A more recent quotation — “Who’s That? Brooown!” by Das Racist:

This story is a perfect illustration of how musical memes evolve the way organisms do. It has a similar evolutionary history to the “Asian riff,” another stereotypically ethnic musical meme.

Original post on Quora

Manu Dibango released “Soul Makossa” in 1972. He wrote it as the B-side to “Mouvement Ewondo,” a praise song for the Cameroonian football team on the occasion of the 1972 Tropics Cup. Language Log explains the chant-like lyrics:

The story behind these seemingly nonsensical syllables is a fascinating one, originating in the Cameroonian language Duala.

Duala is spoken in Douala, Cameroon’s largest city, which has long been a musical hotbed. Since the 1960s, Cameroonian pop music has been dominated by a rhythmic style of dance music from Douala known as makossa. The Duala word makossa is often glossed as “(I) dance” (as in this article by Cameroonian linguist George Echu). The entry for makossa in the Oxford English Dictionary further explains that makossa is “derivative of kosa ‘to peel or remove the skin of (a fruit or vegetable)’; the name refers to the twisting and shaking movements of the dancer.”

Language Log quotes this excerpt of Dibango’s autobiography, Three Kilos of Coffee:

On one side of the 45 I recorded the hymn [praise song]; on the other I recorded “Soul Makossa,” written using a traditional makossa rhythm with a little soul thrown in. In my Douala neighborhood, at my parents’ house, I rehearsed this second piece. The house had no air-conditioning, and the windows were wide open. All the kids flocked around. Hearing me rehearse, they fell over laughing. Unbelievable — how on earth had I concocted that mishmash? Poor makossa really took a blow. My father was astonished: “Can’t you pronounce ‘makossa’ like everyone else? You stutter: ‘mamako mamasa.’ You think they’re going to accept that in Yaoundé?” The Cup organizing committee reacted the same way. The march on side one they found “impeccable.” But the other side… “Really, Manu has gone nuts. What possesses him to stutter like that?”

The New York DJ and party promoter David Mancuso got his hands on “Soul Makossa” and played it incessantly at his loft parties. The song became an underground hit, especially when it started getting airplay on WBLS. The few copies floating around New York were quickly snapped up by other DJs. Several bands rushed out their own covers to fill the gap, most notably Baba Olatunji and the Lafayette Afro-Rock Band. Their versions are fun, but nowhere near as funky as the original. Finally, Atlantic Records released Manu Dibango’s version on one of their sub-labels, and it went so far as to crack the top 40 in 1973.

Soul Makossa quotes, samples and remixes

Quoting “Soul Makossa” became something of a trope in the early eighties, ranging from subtle references to the beat or bassline or horn line to full-blown quotation. My favorite example is by Nairobi featuring the Awesome Foursome.

This song just screams 1982, especially with those 808 cowbells. This song was itself sampled in many other songs, including Schoolly D’s “Mama Feel Good.”

Kool Moe Dee’s “Pump Your Fist” draws on “Soul Makossa” for percussion, the wah guitar stab and part of the main sax riff.

A more recent example: “Latinhead” by Dirty Beatniks.

Soul Makossa has also been sampled by Jay-Z, Geto Boys, Poor Righteous Teachers and A Tribe Called Quest, among many others. See a full list of samples.

Michael Jackson and “Wanna Be Startin’ Something”

By far the most famous musical descendant of “Soul Makossa” is Michael Jackson’s first single from Thriller, the best song on that album and a strong contender for the best song of the eighties, period.

I was at a hippie-ish wedding this past summer. People were having a good time, but not really dancing. Then “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” came up on the iPod and the party suddenly jumped off. Little kids, old folks, everyone in between, people were getting down. Say what you want about Michael Jackson as a human being, but there’s no denying the power of this song. It never fails to get people shaking their butts, across all ages, races, classes and cultural backgrounds.

The copyright-minded among you might well ask: did MJ steal the Makossa chant? Manu Dibango certainly thought so, and sued MJ, eventually reaching an out-of-court settlement. The issue isn’t a cut-and-dried one for me, though. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the two chants:

The most obvious difference is in the syllables, but there are musical differences too. Manu Dibango’s chant is a two-bar phrase sung/chanted entirely on the note G, over an unchanging G7 chord. Michael Jackson’s chant is a four-bar phrase with a call and response structure. He adds a two-note melody harmonized in thirds and a chord progression alternating between D/E and E7. MJ also uses a little more syncopation. I’d say that MJ’s chant is more of an adaptation than a direct theft.

“Wanna Be Startin’ Something” quotes, samples and remixes

Pop and hip-hop musicians quote MJ’s version of the Makossa chant incessantly. Some high-profile examples:

• “No Clause 28” by Boy George
• “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” by Will Smith
• “Cowboys” by the Fugees
• “Brooklyn Girls” by Charles Hamilton
• “Lost In The World” by Kanye West

People love to shout out the chant during live performances, too, everyone from Zap Mama to Jamie Foxx. Rihanna goes further than quoting MJ’s chant; she builds an entire dance track around a reharmonized sample of it. MJ’s song is in the key of E, but Rihanna’s producers put it in the key of F# minor. This is hip stuff; the same notes in MJ’s sunny and uplifting coda become melancholy in Rihanna’s track.

People quote other parts of “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” too. Big Daddy Kane quotes the “Yeah yeah” part in “Warm It Up Kane,” listen at 1:32.

Other tracks quoting this phrase include “Vibin’ (The New Flava Remix)” by Boyz II Men and Busta Rhymes featuring Treach, Craig Mack and Method Man, and “Feels So Good” by Mase.

Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz adapt big swaths of MJ’s song in “Startin’ Something.”

Björk has to be different, of course, so she (mis)quotes the opening line of MJ’s song in live versions of “I Go Humble.” And by the way, her MJ fandom was apparently reciprocal, if this radio show transcript is to be believed.

Visualizing the Makossa diaspora

Here’s a complete map of the genealogy of the Makossa chant; click to enlarge.

Putting it all together

Here’s a mashup I made combining several of the tracks mentioned above so you can get your makossa on.

Wanna Be Startin’ Something megamix by ethanhein

Any noteworthy sightings of the Makossa meme that I missed? Let me know in the comments.

Hat tip to Mike Devlin for coining the phrase “Makossa diaspora.”

Here are my favorite basslines of the last fifty years, across genres.

John Coltrane – “My Favorite Things”

Simple, hypnotic, effective. Read more.

John Coltrane – “Equinox”

Another devastatingly simple groove.

Duke Ellington – “Half The Fun”

Paired with an incredible Sam Woodyard drum part. I love sampling it:

Nature Boy megamix by ethanhein

Duke Ellington – “Fleurette Africaine”

Charles Mingus’ strumming on the intro might be the most beautiful few bars he ever played. Hear a mashup I did of this tune and some other jazz classics:

Autumn Leaves by ethanhein

The Beatles – “Dear Prudence”

I could have chosen any of a dozen Beatles tunes here, I love those McCartney lines. But this one has the most emotional power for me. Here’s a blog post about it, and here’s a mashup I did of “Dear Prudence” with “Never Can Say Goodbye” by the Jackson 5:

Prudence Never Can Say Goodbye by ethanhein

Miles Davis – “It’s About That Time”

From my favorite of Miles’ funk albums. Read a blog post about it.

James Brown – “There Was A Time (I Got To Move)”

Pretty sure that’s Bootsy Collins playing bass, and he kills it.

Herbie Hancock – “Chameleon”

Here’s a visualization I made of this loop.

Talking Heads – “Once In A Lifetime”

Read more about this track, and check out the megamix:

Once In A Lifetime megamix by ethanhein

Michael Jackson – “Billie Jean”

Of course.

Janet Jackson – “What Have You Done For Me Lately”

The song that made the Latelybass sound famous.

Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo – “Diamonds On The Souls Of Her Shoes”

Bakithi Kumalo on the fretless makes this tune for me.

Michael Jackson – “Remember The Time”

Love those Teddy Riley sequenced lines.

Digable Planets – “Rebirth Of Slick”

The bassline is sampled from “Searchin’” by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, but the Digables flipped it into something new.

Black Sheep – “The Choice Is Yours”

Another creative flip of a jazz sample, from McCoy Tyner’s recording of “Impressions.”

Morphine – “Buena”

No embedding; click the image to hear the song:

Two-string slide bass and baritone sax!

Daft Punk – “Around The World”

Never get tired of this one.

Kanye West – “Love Lockdown”

Kanye has been using tuned 808 kick drums to play his basslines lately, which is a dazzlingly hip idea. The kick and the bass are supposed to be in tight sync anyway; why not just fuse them into a single part? I know he’s a ridiculous human being in a lot of ways but the man knows how to put a track together.

Let me know if I missed anything critical, I’m sure I did.

Original post on Quora

DJ BC also did a remarkable album-length mashup of Jay-Z and Brian Eno:

Speaking of Jay, it’s a cliche by now, but Danger Mouse’s Grey Album really is a remarkable piece of work.

For creative use of pop, you’ve got to love DJ Earworm’s United State Of Pop series.

Diplo and M.I.A. deserve props for Piracy Funds Terrorism, especially their reworking of “Walk Like An Egyptian.”

The Walsh brothers did the best Wu-Tang mashup I’ve ever heard: Wugazi!

Finally, I don’t know if I’m one of the best mashup artists, but I’m pretty darn good.

Mashups by ethanhein

Additional recommendations are welcome in the comments.

Original post on Quora