This dissertation develops the concept of generic mobility—which I will tentatively define as the capacity of a music maker to make music that falls into various generic categories. I am trying to understand the practicalities around making music that fits such a description, in the process asking what this says about genre and what it says about the nature of making music in the first place.
To do so, I examine the compositional process of the renowned hip-hop producer, Otis Jackson Jr.—African American, male, born in 1973 in Oxnard, CA, known professionally as Madlib—during the years around the turn of the millennium when he becomes preoccupied with making music that fits such a criterion. Crucial to the understanding of generic mobility developed in this dissertation is that it is an ability.
So, at its core, this project is about the means by a musician might develop such an ability; across the following pages, we see an evolution from a musician whose music and methods are unproblematically legible as “hip-hop” to one whose music and methods activate ambivalent zones across generic space. Each chapter looks at a different dimension along which the ability to do so is developed, and unpacks the generic, aesthetic, music-technical, economic, and political implications of that method. These range from an overview of what Jackson is doing while he is making music, to detailed examinations of his incorporation of magic mushrooms into his compositional process to his turn towards live instruments to his appropriations of Brazilian materials.
So, the primary question this dissertation asks is: how might one go about making music that moves about genre? The primary argument this dissertation makes is that—in the case of Otis Jackson Jr. at least—one gains this capacity by altering the processes by which one makes music.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/j18j-z936 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Kirchen, Charles Paul |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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