Forum - Week 4 - Mass Debate 1

I fail to see the point of student presentations (1), considering my opinion is the only one that matters. Regardless, the topic for today was 'Collaboration', which the Encarta Dictionary defines as "a fibrous protein found in skin, bone, cartilage, tendon, and other connective tissue that yields gelatin when boiled in water" (2). Hon. David Dowling presented a... presentation on the "Symphony And Metallica" collaboration between Michael Kamen and some rock band of mild notoriety. I have heard some of these tracks before, and I felt that the combination of metal guitar and orchestral instruments was fine for a while, but the novelty eventually wore off to the stage where it was embarrassing to be listening to. The conversation afterwards centred around whether the collaboration was a success, which received mixed responses.

The next presentation was from 3rd year Vinny Bhagat, who introduced us to Trilok Gurtu. I found the music very intriguing and would have enjoyed hearing more, however Lady Time (Stephen Whittington) interfered and we only heard short snippets of songs. Next was Will "Ferrell" Revill, who spoke of the collaboration between sound engineers/designers and video game developers. An example of superb collaboration of this sort is between the developers at Bungie Studios and composer Marty O'Donnell for the Halo trilogy on XBOX/X360. Marty is highly involved for the entire development of the games, which allows him to fully understand what sound the game requires in each situation.

The final presentation was from the effervescent 1st year, Sanad, who's topic used a collaboration of Google and Wikipedia to 'bring to light' the irrelevance of the title "World Music". While the talk had all the Sanad zest that we have come to love, supporting content was minimal*, instead relying heavily on unsubstantiated opinion. He argues that the convolution of Eastern society by Western music is a one way street, then strangely alludes to Britney Spears using an Arabic riff and The Chemical Brothers using an Iranian riff. While the overall topic was interesting, I still fail to see why any cultural cross-pollination is so terrible, or why generalisations such as "World Music" are detrimental. The resultant calamity of class discussion was tantamount to the gossiping at a hairdressing salon (and just as meaningful), and in the end there were no answers- just hot collars. This would be a great area of study should Sanad decide to pursue it, perhaps in an essay for Dr. MC.

*University is the expensive exchange of other people's ideas.

1. Stephen Whittington. "Music Technology Forum" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 22nd March, 2007.
2. "Collagen" Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.