ABSTRACT
This chapter is a development of the previous, analysing similar phenomena (reenactment and re-embodiment of past practices and events) taking place in a different cultural context and therefore has a new set of legitimacies associated with it. While musical historicism has been around for centuries, the reuse of instruments and Historically Informed Performance is a relatively new phenomenon, at least insofar as it informs both academia and public fora.1 Historically Informed Performance is linked to the levelling practice of the Early Music revival, which attempted to undermine the starchiness and formality of most modern classical music performance, drawing on oral and folk traditions. Historically Informed Performance similarly moves to deny the key importance of the academic-composer, is performance-and experience-driven, and sits at odds with mainstream musicology. Such practice suggests that a return to the original instruments and performance style can heighten contrast, and emphasis tonal smoothness and transparency. As John Butt argues, Historically Informed Performance in some ways claims a transcendental text which can be approached through authentic performance rather than an artefact which can and does change in time – sometimes termed Werktreue.2 This style re-enacts, using props, the cultural product and experience through a combination of research and performance. Music is an ephemeral as well as material phenomenon, and the assumptions of Historically Informed Performance often suggest that the ear is itself ahistorical, which it manifestly is not; the paradox of re-enactment is threefold: the trio of performer/performance/audience are inauthentic while all at some level striving for or desiring historicity. There is a very literal consumption going on here, in terms of a sense responding to stimuli; this is bodily historicity. The experience here is a channelling of multiple things – material object, ephemeral sound, research into technique, and audience expectation. Listening to such a performance is simultaneously ‘old’ – as it is the ‘authentic’ experience – and self-evidently in the ‘now’. Historically Informed Performance has become a key part of a tourist
experience as can be seen, for instance, in performances in locations such as churches. This reconstructionist drive towards a more authentic experience is
also evident in the rebuilding of Shakespeare’s Globe on Bankside in London. The Globe was built between 1993 and 1997 on the site (just 225m away) of the original theatre on the Thames, costing around £30 million. The site houses a theatre, education complex and exhibition. It is therefore tourist attraction, heritage centre, cultural venue and educational establishment simultaneously.3 As well as being built in the same place – again demonstrating the skewed motive of location – the theatre was built in the same style, being thatched, open-roofed, and the internal auditorium being as close a replica as could be made.4 Audiences ‘experience’ plays there, and the authenticity of the surroundings both helps scholars and actors to understand the dynamics of staging and also gives tourists and theatregoers a sense of getting the play unvarnished, and in a version closer to that of Shakespeare’s own.5 Of course this feeds off transcendental ‘not of an Age but for all time’ Bardolatry; as Graham Holderness points out, Shakespeare has become more a tourist attraction than anything else: ‘[Stratford] is the spiritual heart of the Shakespeare myth: and the institutions of bardolatry and quasi-religious worship are the structures holding that myth in place.’6 The Shakespeare myth fed the building of the Globe as a worthy monument to a national treasure; as such it is a museum as much as anything for the pseudo-living work of the playwright.7 It is an ersatz experience – particularly now the various theatrical experiments it was built for (all-female and all-male companies, authentic costume) have been forgotten about. The Globe has become a theatre in its own right, though, staging newly commissioned drama in addition to Shakespeare, which then becomes a strange hybrid – a modern piece written to be performed on an archaic stage. Globe performances are re-enactments in the same way that Historically
Informed Performance is, but the dynamics are complex and challenging. The Globe’s position, next to the Tate Modern Art Museum, exemplifies contemporary recycling of monuments and a concomitant flexibility about cultural experience and historicity. The Globe is mock-Tudor, quite literally aping an old style; the Tate is a modern exhibition housed in a reused power station. The Tate’s building is the more authentic but it is not being put to its correct usage; the Globe is unreal but built for a particular purpose. The fact that tourists and audiences can happily move between both modes demonstrates a sophistication of engagement with cultural artefacts and their housing. There is a kind of fetishistic equivalent in popular music – with the selling of
memorabilia and the reuse of iconic instruments – but this kind of recycling of practice to enhance and change music more finds its equivalent in pastiche and the actual reusing of key motifs, either through shadowing practice, reusing sounds, or sampling. Retro-musical style is common, with many bands accused of channelling their forbears. Most new rock movements, for instance, owe much to a specific musical moment, and this has also often led to the serving of law suits for plagiarism. Sampling has been around since the early 1980s and is a way of creating a
back-beat in order that an MC can rap over it; in this manifestation it is used to make something new. Sampling is defiantly modern, insofar as it deploys a key new technology – the synthesizer or computer – to use the old to create the new,
albeit with a key element of recognition. Since its origins in early 1980s hip-hop artists such as DJ Shadow (Entroducing, 1996), Girl Talk (Night Ripper, 2008), M/ A/R/R/S (‘Pump Up the Volume’, 1987), the Beastie Boys (Paul’s Boutique, 1989) and the Go! Team (Thunder! Lightning! Strike!, 2004) have created albums or songs made nearly entirely of samples knitted together to make new music. This is a patchwork or collage of inauthenticity, the construction of something from the innumerable tissues of existing culture. Yet at the same time the historical text is bent out of shape in order to become part of something previously unseen, something new rather than an artefact which mimics the old. Sampling is electronic part re-enactment, performance which recycles to make ‘new’; this marks it as clearly different from the remix, which reorganises. It is similar to the cover version, although without its status as recycling being foregrounded in the same way. Cover versions obviously draw on their original and simply fold the historical artefact back into itself. Mark Ronson, for instance, has a stalled career as a rap artist but his cover album Version (2007) is huge selling; winners of television talent shows such as X-Factor or American Pop Idol generally release cover versions first as they have a clear niche market due to their recognisability and instant nostalgia value. The ‘new’ versions gain legitimacy from recognition and renewal, but are often simply recycling the tropes of the past into nostalgic commodity with surface value and little else. A more obvious re-working and mimicry are performed by the tribute band.
Tribute bands are a large industry, having been growing in popularity for about 20 years – they now stage their own festivals and have a large live following.8
Tribute bands again demonstrate a demand for knowingly ‘false’ enactment of events and cultural texts. The bands faithfully replicate the music and the look of their chosen forbears. As Allan Moore argues, the notion of ‘authenticity’ in music is at the very least contested.9 The key distinction between tribute bands and cover bands is that somehow the tribute band is presenting a more concrete, more authentic re-creation of the key texts.10 ‘Tribute’ bands have much in common with the Historically Informed Performance movement – re-enacting songs live as faithfully as possible to their original setting and performance in order to reanimate them. In this case the historically informed element is contextual – to do with costume and attitude rather than the use of antique instruments – and technical, insofar as the bands do not innovate in their rendering of songs (to do so would be to lose the point of the exercise). As the Complete Beatles claim, ‘Performance is totally live – no dodgy backing tracks or gadgets, just a totally authentic sound capturing the atmosphere and excitement from those fab early years!’11 The experience here is both in the performance and in the ‘authentic sound’, a combination of Historically Informed Performance and ephemeral ‘live’-ness. Bands have become abstracted from their actual manifestation as ‘tributes’ and become entities in their own right – in 2004 Led Zepagain were extremely pleased to have Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin’s guitarist, visit one of their LA gigs; Blondie mimics Into the Bleach include a note of support from Debbie Harry on their website and quote drummer Clem Burke: ‘Sam can play Debbie. Pitch Perfect’.12 Several claim that they have been
officially endorsed by their originals, and Oasis tribute band No Way Sis had a top 20 single and stood in for the ‘actual’ band in Paris when they cancelled a gig.13 The tribute band here becomes a stand in for the ‘actual’; the real musicians are relatively irrelevant, and it is the product – performed in an authentic style – that is important. Tribute bands intersect as a recent cultural phenomenon with globally suc-
cessful nostalgia jukebox musicals such as Buddy (based on the songs of Buddy Holly, 1995-), We Will Rock You (Queen, 2002-), Mamma Mia! (ABBA, 1999-), Never Forget (Take That, 2007) and Our House (Madness, 2002). Mamma Mia! has toured globally and been seen by 10 million people as well as grossing over $1bn and being made into a film; We Will Rock You has run for six years in the same theatre as well as opening across the world. The primary text which these musicals look to is Grease! (1972; film 1978), a pastiche created in order to channel nostalgia for the 1950s. The musicals are vehicles of nostalgia, an ‘event’ in which the desired musical texts are importantly delivered live and in a public forum (rather than listened to alone and in privacy).14
