"Programming Rhythmic Frequencies": A Reflection

"Programming Rhythmic Frequencies": A Reflection
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"Programming Rhythmic Frequencies": A Reflection
Typically, rhythm is expected as a given to qualifying a note as musical. The sequencing of rhythms makes it possible for ears to identify a motion to embrace and get along with. More, harmony developed by human players and performers is what defines music appreciation. This view of rhythmical patterns – and, for that matter, music in general – has been under constant
attack by a diversity of rhythmical chaos challenging the well-established music-appreciator relationship. In "Programming Rhythmic Frequencies," Eshun (1998) explores the unlimited potential of music computing, of which Electro is a well-known early example, to override an appreciator's experience completely. More specifically, Eshun argues against the so-called "drum machine" and for a more synthesized, most humanized music experience informed by posthuman (p. 79) and militarized (p. 86) rthymatics. That is, instead of a "humanized" form of music made by and for humans, new forms of music cutting across genres (e.g., Electro, Techo, Hip Hop, etc.) are remaking music appreciation into more fragmented, automated, and nerve sequences:
Not so much maladroit as maladroit, Electro resequences your nerves. As choreographer Merce Cunningham points out, 'Electronic music affects your nerves, not your muscles. It's difficult to count electricity.' Electro like Techno affects nerves and muscles. The rhythmic dissonance of 'counting electricity' resets the shapes of sensation, demands a new dynamotion. Electro Era LA Lockers dancer Shrimp explains this vision of rhythm as 'Boogalooin ', rollin ' of the body. It's makin ' your body do weird things. Like fluid .' (p. 81)
This "newfound" music appreciation dismisses Eshun, is not so much a matter of human creativity per se yet is a matter of a longstanding merger of human and machine into a cyborg existence. The machine is, put differently, taking over and, as such, automating what has once been a purely "human" music appreciation experience, mediated by "emotions" and "spontaneous interaction," into something similar to motorized patterns or "headless music" (as in Remedy) where "delivery becomes mystifying, occluded" and "warnings surface briefly from the information ocean" to which listeners cling like "drowners" (p. 91).
This shift gives way, moreover, to more fictionalized forms of music appreciation. In Drexciya, for instance, slavery worlds are reimagined beyond official, canonized accounts into fictionalized environments putting into question fundamental assumptions made not only about slavery yet also about slave owners:
Every Drexciya EP navigates the depths of the Black Atlantic, the submerged worlds populated by Drexciyans, Lardossans, Darthouven Fish Men, and Mutant Gillmen. In the Sleevenotes to The Quest, their '97 concept double CD, the Drexciyans are revealed to be a marine species descended from 'pregnant America-bound African slaves' thrown overboard 'by the thousands during labor for being sick and disruptive cargo. Could it be possible for humans to breathe underwater? A fetus in its mother's womb is certainly alive in an aquatic environ...