Faculty Interview: Reflections on Electronic Music
Amit Samuel, ALB ’05, sits down with MUSI E-145 instructor Wayne Marshall
For most people, their first encounter with the study of music was spending long hours practicing scales on a piano, learning to play the dreaded F-chord on a guitar, or blowing a brass instrument until they were light-headed and rosy-lipped. For the past several decades, music, like many other things, has gone electronic, and, more recently, digital.
Amit Samuel (left), with Wayne Marshall
This form of music has long been in development in the dancehalls, clubs, studios, and even universities around the world. Mr. Wayne Marshall is attempting to chronicle the history, development, and social impact of electronic music.
In the course MUSI E-145 Electronic Music: History and Aesthetics of Popular of Music Since the 1960s, Marshall investigates electronic music’s various genres, sub-genres, and micro-movements. The course introduces the students to the complexities of electronic music and challenges students to create music in the style being studied. The practical aspect of the course adds an invaluable dimension, by doing: students realize the difficulty of the craft and appreciate the nuances of the various styles.
I got a chance to talk with the indefatigable Mr. Marshall about his background and electronica.
Amit Samuel: Did you always love music, or did you come to music later in life?
Wayne Marshall: I had many flirtations with music before I finally devoted my life to it. From being an avid listener (and MTV watcher) as an adolescent, to getting my first guitar at age 18, to discovering the field of ethnomusicology at the end of college, my engagement with music has been constant and has gradually intensified.
A.S.: When did you discover electronic music?
W.M.: That’s a tough one. I guess it depends on how we define electronic music. According to the course’s rather broad definition, I “discovered” electronic music upon hearing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or old school hip-hop or ’80s synth-pop. In terms of music that explicitly thought of itself and marketed itself as electronic, however, my first exposure may have been as late as the mainstream push for electronica in the mid-’90s, when groups such as Prodigy and Portishead began to get their tracks onto alternative radio and MTV. Soon thereafter, I discovered that these acts only represented the tip of the iceberg as far as electronic music was concerned. I had, of course, heard about house and techno for years at that point, though their presence was not very strong compared to the hip-hop and rock preferred by my peers.
A.S.: How did you develop your Harvard electronic music class?
W.M.: For the past several years I have been trying to make a mental map of the world of music, and the field of electronic music has always stimulated my thinking along these lines, especially in the way that specific technologies and styles seem to connect such seemingly disparate scenes and communities Last year my dissertation advisor, Ron Radano, asked me to help put together a primer about electronic music for him, and this project allowed me to focus on making these connections in a more systematic manner. I decided to turn this primer into a syllabus, and my goal in developing the syllabus was to expose students to the widest possible range of electronic styles, and, in the process, questioning what the term electronic music actually means in contemporary discourse. At the same time, I wanted to attempt not only to engage each of these styles in some depth, but to go beyond purely musical questions (for example, rhythmic patterns, stylistic antecedents, important innovations) and connect such expressions and the practices that surround them to their sociocultural contexts. There are so many stories to tell about this music and the way that it reflects and informs our sense of self and community.
A.S.: What do you think the cultural implications of music are, and do you think they are important?
W.M.: Music does a kind of cultural work that nothing else can do. It’s a very special medium in the way that it floats in the air, enters our bodies, and plays in our minds. Not only does music reflect our ideas about society and culture, self and other, it also informs them in a profound manner. I think that we are products of our soundscape as much as anything else. Music mediates communities. It represents, it communicates, it connects, it challenges. The ways that we talk and think about music are, moreover, inseparable from musical experience. For me, then, music provides a unique window into our world.
A.S.: Your course is now offered as a distance education class. What do you think the implications are for making your class global?
W.M.: Because the course is so Internet- and software-centered, it is well-suited to distance education. I’ve heard from many people around the world who stumbled upon the syllabus and were interested in taking the course. The biggest implication of this, I think, is that it would bring in even more perspectives. Most exciting is that all of the students would be able to hear from classmates about electronic music scenes other than those that they’re already familiar with. Electronic music is definitely a global phenomenon at this point, which is one point I try to make in the course, and it would be great if we could have a more global conversation about what it is, what it means, and how it works in the world.
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