University of Illinois Press, Society For Ethnomusicology Ethnomusicology

Mozart in Mirrorshades: Ethnomusicology, Technology, and the Politics of Representation
Author(s): René T. A. Lysloff

Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 41, No. 2, Special Issue: Issues in Ethnomusicology (Spring -
Summer, 1997), pp. 206-219
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology
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VOL. 41, NO. 2 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY SPRING/SUMMER 1997
Mozart in Mirrorshades:
Ethnomusicology, Technology,
and the Politics of Representation
RENE T. A. LYSLOFF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIV
T imescience
travel is perhaps one of the most widely encountered themes in
fiction and, in the cyberpunk sci-fi story "Mozart in Mirror-
shades" (Sterling and Shiner 1985), the idea of changing history is given an
ironic postmodern twist. In this irreverent tale of the collision of European
highbrow and American lowbrow cultures, time is not a single thread run-
ning from the past through the present and into the future. Instead it is mal-
leable, with infinite possibilities: changing the past simply creates an alter-
native thread of time while our own remains unaffected. Thus, time
travelers could do whatever they wanted, altering and corrupting the past
without the danger of a temporal paradox or some other threat to their own
present. In such a scenario, history itself is the object of economic exploi-
tation and expansion, offering a virtually limitless supply of natural and
cultural resources while also providing an abundance of cheap industrial
labor as well as a vast market for inexpensive and disposable manufactured
goods. In a nutshell, the past becomes the future's third world.
To summarize the story, Mozart's life is radically and irrevocably altered
with the arrival of rapacious time-traveling technocrats (ostensibly from
America's near future). With their considerably superior technology and
scientific knowledge, the time travelers proceed to extract the natural and
cultural resources of 1775 Europe. In two years, they build several gigantic
petrochemical refineries with pipelines reaching oil reserves throughout the
planet, bringing their own heavy equipment from the future and employing
local labor from the past. In exchange, they offer cheap manufactured goods,
commodifiable technology, and limited scientific knowledge to the natives.
The past thus becomes "modernized" with electricity, electronic gadgetry,
mass media, popular culture, and twenty-first-century fashion.
? 1997 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
206
Mozart in Mirrorshades 207
Along with many other young natives, Mozart is profoundly in

by the media technology and popular music brought by the time-t
Indeed, he falls in love with the musical possibilities of the f
manages to purchase various kinds of electronic audio equipme
ing to the radio and numerous cassette tapes acquired from the
elers, he quickly teaches himself the rock idiom. Discarding his
wig, velvet waistcoat, and knee breeches, Mozart now sports
hedgehog haircut, faded jeans, camo jacket, and mirrored sung
hashish-smoking rock musician, Mozart is soon the rage of Sal
of his concerts is described in the story as follows: "Minuetlike
peggios screamed over sequenced choral motifs. Stacks of amp
synthesizer riffs lifted from a tape of K-Tel pop hits. The howling
showered Mozart with confetti stripped from the club's hand-pain
paper" (Ibid.:229).
Indeed, Mozart enjoys far greater success in the hi-tech popu
scene than he does seeking court or church patronage with his
ditional compositions. In any case, the many pieces he was to h
ten later in his life are now already available on commercial cas
Furthermore, he learns from the history books provided by one of
travelers that, for him, classical music is a far too dangerous profe
pursuing it would assuredly mean his own eventual death in po
clever young man, Mozart thus modifies his musical interests t
course of his own destiny. In the end, "Wolf" as he is now calle
a "green card" and allowed to emigrate to the future where his
already hit the charts.
Music and Technoculture
I use "Mozart in Mirrorshades" to illustrate an aspect of culture t

been largely ignored by ethnomusicologists. Although the gener
cultural imperialism was introduced several decades ago, it was a
as 1986, when this story first appeared, that music scholars (mos
specializing in popular music) were beginning to discuss in earn
global impact of Anglo-European mass media and popular culture. Ye
of these studies have tended to focus on the software of media t
(that is, the "industry" and its products).1
While remaining within the general discussion of cultural imperi
I want to shift attention toward the widely distributed electronic h
of media technology: the radios, microphones, amplifiers, cass
recorders, stereo systems, CD players, and so forth, that are now
a part of our everyday lives that it would be difficult to imagine be
out them. At this point I want to introduce the term "technocul
208 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 1997
define it according to several essays by Andrew Ross (see, for example, Ross
and Penley [1991] and Ross [1991]). Ross argues that the recent media and
information technologies have given rise to new communities and forms
of cultural practice. The term technoculture, according to him, describes
social groups and behaviors characterized by creative strategies of techno-
logical adaptation, avoidance, subversion, or resistance. Furthermore, Ross
argues that "it is important to understand technology not as a mechanical
imposition on our lives but as a fully cultural process, soaked through with
social meaning that only makes sense in the context of familiar kinds of
behavior" (1991:3). Technology, then, is not simply the social and personal
intrusions of big science made manifest; it also permeates and informs al-
most every aspect of human experiences.
"Mozart in Mirrorshades" brings this argument closer to home. With a
postmodern juxtaposition of nostalgia for the past and cynicism about the
future, old world tradition and "brave new world" technoculture are
brought into direct conflict in the body of Mozart. The story thus drama-
tizes the often adversarial relationship between technology and culture,
particularly the new media technology and what is considered "traditional"
culture. Extending Ross's concept of technoculture further, I want to ar-
gue that changing technologies implicate cultural practices and epistemolo-
gies involving music-and not only popular music. It is important to note
that, even while we may deny its power over us, electronic technology is
rapidly becoming the primary means through which we experience mu-
sic. Increasingly, the CD or cassette (or phonograph) recording is no longer
supplemental to the experiencing of live musical performance. More often
than not, it is the reverse: mediated performance has now become the
originating source for experiencing a given music. Furthermore, a great deal
of music is now more commonly conceived with this same audio technol-
ogy in mind, created to be experienced through the home stereo or the
radio rather than through live performance. As Paul Theberge argues, "elec-
tronic technologies and the industries that supply them are not simply the
technical and economic context within which 'music' is made, but rather,
they are among the very preconditions for contemporary musical culture,
thought of in its broadest sense, in the latter half of the twentieth century"
(1993:151; my emphasis).
Thus, because of the far-reaching implications of musical technoculture,
we must consider a broad spectrum of practices and epistemologies-not
only techno-musical sub- and countercultures, but behaviors and
knowledges ranging from traditional institutions on the one hand to con-
temporary music scholarship on the other. By examining technocultures
of music, we can overcome the conventional distinction, even conflict,
between technology and culture, implicit especially in studies of "tradi-
tional" musics in the field of ethnomusicology.
Representing the Other

Common sense tells us that technology, rather than being p
lived experience, only mediates it. Until recently, this view ha
parent in much of the ethnomusicological literature and the variou
ing methods used to represent the soundscape of the musical Other
musicologists are allowed, even encouraged, to use technology i
bringing to the field cameras, cassette tape players (or now, d
recorders), microphones, handycams, and so on. Upon return
field, we listen to our material on our stereos, view it on our VCR
televisions, and write about it on our personal computers. Som
ers edit, analyze, and recontextualize recorded material with so
electronic studio equipment. Others, if their recordings are m
might even distribute their field materials through commercial re
panies. We might say, then, that technology privileges researchers
ing them from the object of research-whether musical or hu
allowing them to control it. Indeed, the sound document becom
object: isolated from the noisy chaos of real life in the field
analyzable, frameable, manipulable, and ultimately... exploitab
The technologically privileged position of the ethnomusico
largely assumed in the literature. After all, the history of ethnom
is closely linked to the history of audio recording. Writing on
nology" in the widely used graduate textbook, Ethnomusicolo
troduction, Helen Myers complains about the declining standards o
ing in the field: "In the 1990s we face the danger that pro
ethnomusicologists, by opting for convenience, are preserving
and sounds of music of our time on domestic equipment design
nally as dictation machines or for amateur enthusiasts to make
ies" (1992:84). Myers continues by asserting that pedestrian r
presumably made with mediocre equipment, result in "equally
standards of writing" (ibid.). This privileging of recording tech
the curatorial positioning of ethnomusicology was not lost on
Middleton, who viewed it as "yet another result of the colonial que
Western bourgeoisie, bent on preserving other people's musics b
disappear, documenting 'survivals' or 'traditional' practices, and
the pleasures of exoticism into the bargain" (1990:146). After n
ethnomusicologists focus almost exclusively on the music of "Orien
cultures and folk or "primitive" societies, he continues with th
critical observation: "The primary motives for ethnomusicolog
cism, then, obviously lie in value judgments about 'authenticit
cal culture" (ibid.).
Indeed, assumptions about Western technological preeminence and
scientific know-how-rooted in past colonialist notions of social (and even
racial) superiority-invest ethnomusicology with the authority to validate

a given music. Yet, in practice, evaluation of musical authenticity gener-
ally is informed by the need for both ethnographic legitimacy and aesthetic
interest.2 The whole matter becomes politically charged when it is applied
to recorded musical Others: that is, the argument that an "authentic" per-
formance is a good thing often becomes conflated with the idea that a good
performance sounds "authentic." The technologically privileged ethnomusi-
cologist is thus caught in a web of conflicting notions of aesthetics, ethno-
graphic truth, acoustical reality, cultural legitimacy, and specific intellec-
tual interests. Consider the following passage from the same essay by Helen
Myers:
The ethnomusicologist's concern for context should extend even to record-
ing techniques. In fieldwork, it is essential to remember one is recording not
only a sound source but also its context, the sound field. The ethnomusi-
cologist's dream of placing all the performers in a professional recording stu-
dio (often done by national cultural institutes at great expense) robs the per-
formance of its natural ambiance: audience, traffic, animals, conversation,
discussion, cooking, eating, drinking-life (1992:53).
In this passage, an aesthetics of authenticity blurs with a quasi-anthro-

pological discourse on contextualized realism. The researcher must decide
between the musicological "purity" of studio production and the ethnologi-
cal "realism" of the field recording in a "natural" setting. My point here is
not to debate the merits of one kind of recording over another but to
problematize the ethnomusicologist's position vis-ai-vis audio technology-
and to suggest the implicit and often contested notions of authenticity and
authority related to such technology when recordings are read as cultural
"texts."
On the other hand, when "natives" use electronic devices or enjoy

mediated performances, technology is now considered intrusive and ofte
rendered invisible by the researcher. An example of this is a documentar
film made several years ago of Javanese shadow theater. The film crew in-
sisted on the use of an oil lantern, instead the usual electric lamp, for pur-
poses of "authenticity." Another example took place in the 1970s, when
researcher recorded Javanese court gamelan music in Yogyakarta and
Surakarta for a commercial recording company. The researcher did not
place microphones in such a way to feature the female vocalists, as Javanese
engineers usually do in studio recordings and radio broadcasts, but, instead,
placed them in such a way that the vocal parts remained simply another
layer in the complex texture of traditional Javanese music-according to
current American views of "authentic" gamelan sound-rendering invisible
any suggestion of electronic amplification of the female voice. This roman-
ticized notion of "authenticity," along with the concurrent hostility toward
technological intrusion, is not far from the kind of view held

music who booed at Bob Dylan when he "went electric" in
Frith notes in reference to popular music, "the implication is
ogy is somehow false or falsifying," that it is "unnatural" (cr
presence in performance) "alienating" (coming between
their audiences) and somehow "opposed to art" (emptying
mance of creativity and expressiveness) (1986:265-66). Th
why ethnomusicologists have, at least until very recently
to concern themselves with mass-mediated and experimen
porary musics. Even as we use media technology in our ev
may often fail to recognize that these devices-the radio,
tem, the television-have all become heavily loaded with
cultural baggage. It is especially easy to forget that across
aries technology can take on different meanings and be used
contexts. For example, while the radio might be dismisse
an alienating and consumer-driven medium of culturally-drai
talist corporate society, it has another set of meanings in the
where it is used to broadcast the call to prayer and main
ethnic and religious community in modem urbanized sett
From Schizophonia to Plunderphonics

New technology has elevated sound reproduction beyond realism into
a kind of audio hyper-reality. New digital recording and editing techniques
in fact now allow us to create acoustical environments that could not pos-
sibly exist in live contexts-but which, nonetheless, seem real. While ear-
lier media technologies have extended our eyes and ears, the new digital
technologies are now extending the imagination-and, in turn, the imagi-
nation itself is, to a large extent, determined by the mass media that em-
ploys these new technologies. The issue of authenticity becomes further
problematized in this age of what Dick Hebdige calls "versioning" (1987:12-
6). In other words, the recording is no longer the end-product in the docu-
mentation of musical performance; it is now only a particular version, open
to expropriation, remix, resequencing, and recontextualization.
This leads us to another issue in technoculture. The discussions sur-
rounding cultural imperialism have tended to focus on the influen
Western mass media on the music of the Other (See, for example, Goodw
and Gore [1990] and Laing [1986]). Unique traditions and practices,
believe, will eventually disappear in a process of cultural graying out in
globalization of mass media and communications technology. (For m
cultural grayout see Lomax 1968 and 1977.) The discussion becomes
complex and problematic, however, with the advent of digital techn
It is no longer simply a matter of the impact of such media on the musical

Other but also what media are taking from and doing with world music-
that is, how media are re-presenting the Other. Through the magic of digi-
tal technology, traditional musics captured on earlier sound recordings are
now available as source material for new recombinant musical forms. Thus,
the technological innovations that first resulted in schizophonia-the sepa-
ration of sound from its originating source-continue to be further devel-
oped, leading to another technocultural phenomenon, what John Oswald
calls "plunderphonics" (1992:116-125)-the art and compositional preroga-
tive of audio piracy.3
When Murray Schafer introduced the term schizophonia over two de-
cades ago, he intended it to be a "nervous" word because audio technol-
ogy "creates a synthetic soundscape in which natural sounds are becom-
ing increasingly unnatural while machine-made substitutes are providing the
operative signals directing modem life" (1980:91). Inspired by the word
schizophrenia, the term is meant to raise anxious questions about the im-
pact of audio technology not only across cultures but within our own cul-
ture. Plunderphonics is also a nervous word, perhaps. On the one hand, it
questions the idea of ownership and the notion that acoustic materials, such
as sound samples used to inspire composition, could themselves be con-
sidered compositions (Oswald 1992:116). While a piece of music, a per-
formance, or even a melody may be legally protected from copyright in-
fringement, should the same laws be used to protect individual tones or
rhythms, or even timbres? As audio technology becomes more sophisticated
and interactive, the line between rightful ownership and legitimate creative
appropriation grows increasingly blurred. On the other hand, unique
soundscapes and musical traditions of the world are now routinely becom-
ing compositional grist for commodity culture, open to versioning. Most
of us are aware of past debates over musical projects by Paul Simon, David
Byrne, and Mickey Hart as well as other popular music artists who have
found themselves in the ambiguous role of being both curators and exploit-
ers of world music.
An example of versioning is a recent popular recording by the 199

grammy award-winning ambient techno group called Deep Forest. In th
eponymous 1992 album, the music of the Pygmies (more correctly kno
as the Mbuti people) of the Ituri Forest in Zaire became transformed in
an industrialized dance music known as techno. Instead of simply appr
priating Pygmy music, the group uses digital technology to create wh
appears to be a collaborative effort with the Pygmies in a larger transcultur
project. Sampled and sequenced songs of the Pygmies are melodically a
rhythmically incorporated into the overall musical texture throughout the
album. Overall, the result is impressive but troubling. In the title trac
("Deep Forest"), over thick, synthesized Western harmonies, a deeply

nant male voice intones: "somewhere-deep in the jungle-are living s
little men and women-they are our fossils-and maybe-maybe they
our future." In another track called "Night Bird," traditional Pygmy sing
is seamlessly layered over environmental sounds, lush drawn-out New
like harmonies, and a driving ambient-techno-dance beat.
In the liner notes, the members of Deep Forest attempt to contextual
their project in a romantically phrased and somewhat garbled rhetor
global ecology and endangered cultural practices (Sanchez 1992):
Imprinted with ancestral wisdom of the African chants, the music of D
Forest immediately touches everyone's soul and instinct. The forest of all c
lizations is a mysterious place where the yarn of tales and legends is wo
with images of men, women, children, animals and fairies. Not only living c
tures, but also trees steeped in magical powers. Universal rites and cust
have been profoundly marked by the influence of the forest, a place of po
and knowledge passed down from generation to generation by the oral tr
tions of primitive societies. The chants of Deep Forest, Baka chants of
Cameroun, of Burundi, of Senegal and of Pygmies, transmit a part of this im-
portant oral tradition gathering all peoples and joining all continents through
the universal language of music. Deep Forest is the respect [for] this tradition
which humanity should cherish as a treasure which marries world harmony, a
harmony often compromised today. That's why the musical creation of Deep
Forest has received the support of UNESCO and of two musicologists, Hugo
Zempe and Shima Aron [sic], who collected the original documents.
Here, as in the recording itself, the Pygmies are unknowing collabora-

tors in an Orientalistic narrative of cultural exoticism commodified through
the trope of musical universalism, of authentically "primitive" animism colo-
nized by New Age mysticism, and of primal nature salvaged through high
technology. Note the discursive strategy of invoking UNESCO along with the
names of scholars Hugo Zemp and Simha Arom (whose names are both mis-
spelled in the original text) to add academic and political authority to the
project. In these textual and musical narratives, Pygmies disappear into what
Donna Haraway calls "a political semiotics of representation."
Permanently speechless, forever requiring the services of a ventriloquist, never
forcing a recall vote, in each case the object or ground of representation is the
realization of the representative's fondest dream. ... The effectiveness of such
representation depends on distancing operations. The represented must be
disengaged from surrounding and constituting discursive nexuses and relocated
in the authorial domain of the representative. Indeed, the effect of this magi-
cal operation is to disempower those.., .who are 'close' to the now-repre-
sented 'natural' object.... The represented is reduced to the permanent sta-
tus of the recipient of action, never to be a co-actor in an articulated practice
among unlike, but joined, social partners (1992:311).
In the case of Deep Forest, the musical and texted narratives "speak"
for the expropriated and muted Pygmies, disempowering them as discur-
sive objects but, at the same time, enrolling them as rhetorical allies and
passive musical collaborators. With Western state-of-the-art technology, the
artists and producers have positioned themselves as curators of a docile
Pygmy culture-they even vow to donate part of their profits to "The Pygmy
Fund" and urge their fans to do the same-and high-tech plunderphonia is
now justified in the names of global ecology and cultural preservation.
Everyone is happy! The Pygmies are the recipients of post-colonial West-
ern concern and munificence, the recording artists and producers gain fame
and fortune, and the listener is transformed into a social activist through
the simple act of consumption.
Deep Forest defines itself not as a band but as "a concept, a state of
mind." Meditative music like that of Deep Forest and romantic sentiments
toward disappearing ecology and peoples are usually the domain of New
Age artists and aging rock stars. Indeed, it is astounding that such ideas are
found on this album considering that the Deep Forest project arose out of
the Euro-American urban techno-dance scene. One can hardly imagine a
community further removed from traditional culture and the concerns of
rainforest ecology. Yet recordings like Deep Forest, with an emphasis on
soothing and often exotic sound sculptures, are increasingly popular among
techno fans. Such recordings are identified as "ambient" techno, intended
originally as music for cooling down from the hypnotic effects and physi-
cality of techno rave events and dance clubs. Generally, world music is now
part of the technological "primitivism" of both New Age and techno ambi-
ent music, both often appropriating the musical Other for exotic, medita-
tive sound sculpturing. Another album, entitled Ethnotechno (1993, Wax
Trax! Records Inc), is made up of a collection of various techno-music art-
ists combining sampled world musics with a synthesized techno beat. In
the liner notes, the compiler, Scott Taves, defines ethnotechno as "ethnol-
ogy and technology" and the collection is described as: "World musics and
ancient cultures interface with state of the art music machines in the elec-
tronic underground. Nothing too precious or academic will be allowed
here. A global outlook and a lust for futuristic groove is the bottom line.
Welcome to Ethno-Techno, Sonic Anthropology Volume 1."
In this case, the artists are not presented as advocates for endangered
cultures and ecologies but as travelers in a rich world of musical diversit
made accessible through the technology of digital sampling. There is no
moralizing over disappearing forests and musical traditions. Instead, th
"authentic" sounds of traditional world music are incorporated into the
technological artificiality of synthesizer and drum machines to create "sonic
anthropology" where the listener can "travel" to exotic acoustical spaces
On the cellophane wrapper is a sticker stating, "75 minutes of pan-globa
electro bliss." The various cuts, similar to the Deep Forest projec
non-Western sampled sounds and music in new compositions but
original material left recognizable to the untrained ear. That is,
with basic world music background will likely be able to identif
ample, the Tuva throat-singing in the piece "Alash (When I Graze M
tiful Sheep)" by Juno Reactor.4 The pleasure of listening to recordin
these is not in cultural advocacy, despite the rhetoric of the De
project; nor is it to provide the listener with a kind of "authentic"
experience, as with many New Age music compositions employi
musics and/or natural sounds. Instead, the pleasure of such tech
ent music lies in the technological artifice itself-in "natural" so
music) being made "un-natural" through sequencing in the conte
thesized rhythms and sounds.
Digital sampling is also heard increasingly in non-Western
music. In Indonesia, for example, digital technology and sample
bytes from American television, radio, and pop music, are ofte
sometimes ingenious and startling ways. Technology often carries a
ent, often ambiguous, set of meanings, usually related to the fear o
ernization and secularization (particularly in Islamic societies) al
a desire for modernization. In Javanese shadow theater performance
region of Banyumas, musicians sometimes use a Cassio keyboard
tion to the gamelan, for creating sound effects to accompany action
Interestingly, they refer to this as musik (referring to Western
distinguish it from the music of the gamelan (known as krawita
donesian popular music, sampled sounds and high-tech musical instr
are used in the creation of a recent sub-genre called disco-dangd
identifies the parent genre, dangdut, is the instrumentation (fea
Indian tabla-like sound), the musical influence from both Indian
sic and American rock, and most importantly, the stressed fourth a
beats in a four-beat meter. Disco-dangdut continues to have mos
characteristics but with a faster beat along with the addition of syn
sound and digital sampling. Particularly interesting is the playf
sampled material, usually voice sounds (ranging from simple vo
whole phrases as well as hissing and sighs), to add a complex te
interlocking vocal parts-very much like the traditional pr
senggakan (non-texted vocal calls) in rural gamelan music perf
In this case, technology has provided local artists with the means fo
ploying traditional ideas in new musical contexts.
Audio Simulacra
For better or worse, sampling technology has stimulated a g

of creativity among artists throughout the world who are becomin
sound engineers as they are musicians; in appropriating acoustic material

from both near and far away, such artists enhance and expand the sound
possibilities of their own compositions and reinscribe new meanings over
past traditions. Sold in compact disk or cassette tape format, new record-
ings are increasingly conceived and produced with stereo high-fidelity au-
dio technology in mind and range from exact reproductions of natural
soundscapes and other found sounds to complex compositions made up
of sequenced or otherwise digitally-manipulated sound and music samples
combined with the synthesizers and studio-performed acoustical instru-
ments. Many such recordings often employ remixed and resequenced
sounds appropriated from other recordings, making it difficult to trace or
even recognize the originating source material. They range from exact but
selective reproductions of natural soundscapes (or virtual sonic realities)
to complex compositions made up of sequenced or otherwise digitally-
manipulated sound samples combined with the music of synthesizers and
studio-performed acoustical instruments. Such recordings are true
simulacra-perfect copies whose originals never existed. Examples of
musical simulacra are abundant in particular genres of popular music" hip-
hop, reggae, techno, and ambient, to name some.5
In the field of ethnomusicology, one of the best known examples of
audio simulacra is the now familiar Voices of the Rainforest recorded by
Stephen Feld in Papua New Guinea and released by Rykodisc in 1991. Like
the time travelers in "Mozart in Mirrorshades," Feld came to New Guinea
with state-of-the-art technology, not to exploit the Kaluli but to study their
music. Using pioneering field-recording and studio-editing techniques, Feld
provided a superb compact disk of a "typical" twenty-four-hour day in the
life of the Kaluli, made up equally of both environmental sounds and local
musical performance. However, with the use of superior audio technology
both in the field and later in the studio, Feld was able to intervene in Kaluli
reality by omitting the sounds of... technology. Feld admits that his record-
ing presents a rather unusual soundscape day, "one without the motor
sounds of tractors cutting the lawn at the mission airstrip, without the
whirring rhythms of mission station generator, washing machine, or saw-
mill. Without the airplanes taking off and landing .., or the local radios ..
, or cassette players with run-down batteries. ... And without the recently
intensified and almost daily buzz of helicopters and light planes..."
(1991:137 and later in Feld and Keil 1994).
Feld himself addresses the representational politics behind his record-
ing, posing the troubling question of whether "Voices" is a deceptive or
romanticized portrait of the Kaluli soundscape. He answers that it is a highly
specific portrayal, "a sound world that increasingly fewer Kaluli will actively
know about and value, but one that increasingly more Kaluli will only hear
on cassette and sentimentally wonder about" (ibid.). Feld's di

fact now (or soon will be) the dilemma of all ethnomusicologis
the cyberpunk story I described earlier, the ethnomusicologis
enlightened attitudes toward technology and ecology, and his
views of the native, has become the sympathetic "time-traveler" w
the irrevocably changed Mozart recordings of his own never-t
symphonies. Indeed, like the cyberpunk Mozart, the Kaluli are nos
a lost past that, as a result of the impact of technology, can
vicariously experienced through technology.
Conclusions
One of the reasons I especially enjoyed the story "Mozart in

Mirrorshades" was the ambiguous ending. From one perspective, Mozart
could be seen as a tragic figure, his destiny as the world's greatest classical
composer preempted by the arrival of the exploitative time-traveling tech-
nocrats. From this perspective, we might view the advent of technology
with the kind of suspicion and cynicism found among thinkers like Neil
Postman, who see a growing "technopoly" that slowly but inexorably emp-
ties the world of symbolic meaning, replacing it with the free-floating signs
of advertisements and fashion (1993). The post-colonial era might be viewed
as a time of virtual colonization: traditional cultures are not protected under
current copyright laws and their musics (and other practices and
knowledges) are thus open to electronically-based commercial colonization
by the first world mass media. Indeed, it is a time when an entire name for
a people and their practices could become appropriated to signify a com-
puter networking program and registry (as, in fact, is the case of "Java" and
"Gamelan," now copyrighted by EarthWeb LLC and Sun Microsystems).
However, Mozart might also be understood as a kind of hero or trick-
ster. Adapting to the reality of his situation he cleverly manages to avoid
imminent death in poverty and even become a wealthy rock star of the
future. Thus, ethnomusicologists might learn several lessons from the story:
(1) that the "native" is not necessarily a naive and passive recipient of media
technology; (2) that media technology may be especially empowering for
those people with little or no political and economic power; (3) that people
may use media technology in radically new and surprising ways, and infuse
it with meanings specific to such use; and (4) the social meanings associ-
ated with particular technologies often change as these technologies
traverse cultural boundaries.
Using the story as a twisted allegory we might conclude that the

dia technologies are far from neutral. Nor are they ever fully controlled
any single constituency. They are sites of continuous social and pol
struggle-in the realm of world music, the struggles are acted out in terms
of cultural ownership, musical authenticity, and intellectual authority. While
it is true that media technologies were developed in the interests of indus-
try and corporate profit, and for the purposes of domination and exploita-
tion (Penley and Ross 1991 :xii), they are also becoming more standardized,
accessible, and widely disseminated-and the corporate control over their
use increasingly decentralized.6 In other words, although the media tech-
nologies may be a facet of larger hegemonizing and homogenizing forces,
their accessibility and availability provide people with more means to cope
with, even to resist or subvert those same forces.
In this article, I have proposed some new understandings of musical
culture where the concept of "culture" itself is radically reconfigured in
terms of ever-expanding, increasingly sophisticated media and informational
technology. What we need is an ethnomusicology of technoculture, the
ethnomusicological study of such reconfigured cultures. My purpose is to
break from past conventions of examining only folkish or high art "tradi-
tions" of music. As world music (whether popular or folk or high art) be-
comes increasingly implicated in the globalization of advanced audio tech-
nologies, the field of ethnomusicology will have to adapt to changing ideas
of musical authenticity, cultural representation, and intellectual authority.
It will be the work of the ethnomusicologist to analyze and explain the
cultural negotiations involved with the global intersections of traditional
musics, popular desires, and technological possibilities.
Notes
1. One of the earliest studies to address music and technology specifically is K

(reprinted with a brief postlude by the author in Feld and Keil 1994).
2. See, for example, Bruno Nettl's remarks (1983:316): "The concept of the 'au
for a long time dominated collecting activities, became mixed with 'old' and 'ex
synonymous with 'good."'
3. Oswald coined the term in 1989 when he named his now-outlawed album Plunder-
phonics, a recording made up of various, often parodic, manipulations of music by well-known
performers and composers ranging from Michael Jackson, the Beatles, and Dolly Parton to
Stravinsky and Beethoven. Although his sources were scrupulously credited and copies of the
album were not sold but simply given away, Oswald was threatened with a lawsuit by the
Canadian Recording Industry Association. In the end, he was forced to stop distribution and
destroy all remaining copies. He now uses the term to refer to the problems of musical cre-
ativity in the age of electronic (digital) reproduction.
4. The Tuva throat-singing was sampled off the Smithsonian-Folkways recording, Tuva:
Music from the Center of Asia.
5. For a detailed discussion of hip-hop technoculture, see Rose 1994.
6. For a fascinating discussion of the media technolgies, particularly in relation to the
recording industry in India, see the Introduction to Peter Manuel's important work, Cassette
Culture (1993).
References
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Mozart in Mirrorshades: Ethnomusicology, Technology, and the Politics of Representation

Author(s): René T. A. Lysloff

RENE T. A. LYSLOFF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIV

? 1997 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Along with many other young natives, Mozart is profoundly in

Music and Technoculture

I use "Mozart in Mirrorshades" to illustrate an aspect of culture t

Representing the Other

racial) superiority-invest ethnomusicology with the authority to validate

In this passage, an aesthetics of authenticity blurs with a quasi-anthro-

On the other hand, when "natives" use electronic devices or enjoy

technological intrusion, is not far from the kind of view held

From Schizophonia to Plunderphonics

It is no longer simply a matter of the impact of such media on the musical

An example of versioning is a recent popular recording by the 199

("Deep Forest"), over thick, synthesized Western harmonies, a deeply

Here, as in the recording itself, the Pygmies are unknowing collabora-

For better or worse, sampling technology has stimulated a g

sound engineers as they are musicians; in appropriating acoustic material

on cassette and sentimentally wonder about" (ibid.). Feld's di

One of the reasons I especially enjoyed the story "Mozart in

Using the story as a twisted allegory we might conclude that the

1. One of the earliest studies to address music and technology specifically is K

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