Polley show: Double Lives in Art and Pop Music

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Polley Music Library radio program on KZUM. For those
unfamiliar, the Polley Music Library is a public music library located on the 2 nd floor of the Bennett
Martin library downtown at 14th and N streets. The Polley Music Library is a service of Lincoln City
Libraries funded by the Lillian Helms Polley Trust. We have books about classical music, jazz, rock, pop,
blues, musicals, folk, hip hop, sacred music, and musical traditions from around the world. And we have
books about music education, music therapy, environmental sound and field recordings, music
production, recording, mixing and mastering, record collecting, music theory, the ins and outs of the
music business—you name it! Stop by any time Bennett Martin Public Library is open, and you can check
out materials with your library card!

On a similar note to last week’s show, today we’ll look at a book that takes an unusual philosophical
approach to looking at music. This week’s book is called Double Lives in Art and Pop Music, written by
Jorg Heiser, and as the title would suggest, it explores musicians who have also worked in the field of
art, or whose musical practices sometimes expand into broader worlds. I suppose we should define
some terms up front to fully understand where this book is coming from: of course music is a form of
art, but generally when Heiser refers to “art” in the context of his book, he is talking about non-musical
forms of art: painting, performance art, film or video work, installation art, and those kinds of activities.
And there’s another phrase that comes up a lot in the book, which is “context switching,” around which
revolves the crux of his observations. Here’s his definition of context switching so that we can use it
going forward: “This denotes the movement of a cultural producer from one art form to another—
considered, crucially, in connection with associated markets, milieus, media technologies, and
institutions (their contexts), which includes the social factors that shaped the art forms in the first
place.”

So ultimately we’re looking at how artists choose to move between artistic disciplines, and the unique
approaches they take when doing so—some find lots of connections between such practices, while
others maintain fairly separate worlds of work. Some move back and forth between disciplines regularly
or are constantly working in both areas, while others go through long stretches of focus in one area or
the other. I think that in many ways, the interest behind undertaking this analysis lies in the notion that
we’re looking at practices that are likely reaching their final eras of remaining so discrete in terms of
context. That is, the dividing lines between art forms are increasingly blurred, as are the dividing lines
between so called “high” and “low” art forms, or arts made for academic or institutional audiences
versus the general public. In the hyperlinked internet age, so much work in creative disciplines happens
across all kinds of old lines dividing types of media, and the consumption of the arts has become less
ordered, or at least less concerned with the old kinds of order that we looked at like historical
chronology or geography. Heiser looks at multidisciplinary artist/musicians from roughly the 1960s to
the 2010s, the modern golden age of multidisciplinary practices, and perhaps as we go forward within
increasingly ahistorical and blended times, we can pick up valuable ideas from the working habits of
these artists.

Throughout the book, a secondary theme is generally running as well, which has to do with the
worldview under which these artist/musicians operate. This is divided broadly into two categories:
utopia and dystopia. Heiser sees these opposites as a framework through which to view sociopolitical
contexts related to various artist/musicians’ practices: some are working in places or eras of social
and/or political upheaval, while others are working in more peaceful times and places. These differences
inform their work, of course, but sometimes it appears that they may also influence how or even why
they jump between artistic disciplines.

The first sections of the book deal with well-known artists and musicians that help to establish what
Heiser is looking for. Starting with Andy Warhol and his involvement with the Velvet Underground, we
see how the Warhol’s Factory scene moved between the worlds of art and pop music, with Warhol of
course getting lots of attention from Fine Art critics and art dealers and collectors, while the Velvet
Underground became a very influential pop act. Then we get to explore the artistic interactions between
Yoko Ono and John Lennon, who influenced one another from their diverse backgrounds, Ono coming
out of the Fluxus art movement and Lennon of course being a working-class musician.

After that, the book gets into some relatively lesser-known but very interesting artists. I guess some of
them are still quite well-known, like Brian Eno and Laurie Anderson. But generally we learn of many
artists who also work with music, and in the context of the book, it tends to be “pop” music, or music
that’s released as commercially available recordings and at times can find a home in places like dance
clubs or on the radio.

It doesn’t seem that “Double Lives in Art and Pop Music” comes to any specific consensus about the
behavior of multidisciplinary artists as a whole, and that’s to be expected. It is interesting to look at their
work through various trends and polarities, though, from the utopia/dystopia opposites mentioned
before, to social and political upheaval, to more practical issues like fluctuations in the economic
realities of different disciplines. Heiser observes, for example that the art world was going through
rough times in the 1990s while pop music flourished, and that by the late Oughts and early 2010s, it was
music that was struggling economically under the changing conditions of illegal downloading, while the
market for fine arts was exploding. There are probably as many reasons for switching between
disciplines as there are artist/musicians who do so, and it’s fun to read about what brings them
together, as well as their unique paths.

Now let’s check out a few artists that are referenced in the book!

Let’s start with a tune related to Brian Eno. The discussion around him in ”Double Lives” revolves around
his musical work with installations, and I’d extend to that the notion that he came to music from art
school, and has said many times that he doesn’t consider himself a musician. Here’s a track from his
most recent collaboration with David Byrne, another artist who has crossed between the worlds of
music and other forms of art, including drawing, photography, writing, and film. This is the title track
from their collaborative album, “Everything that Happens Will Happen Today”

David Byrne and Brian Eno – Everything That Happens Will Happen Today – Everything that happens…

Yoko Ono is often the punchline for jokes about breaking up the Beatles and similar such nonsense, but
the truth is that she was a well-respected artist in her own right before having anything to do with the
Beatles. While there’s no arguing that he approach to vocals, is often an acquired taste, to put it
diplomatically, she knows her way around a pretty pop song at times, too. Here’s a great example of
that, a tune called “memory of Footsteps,” from her 2009 album “Between My Head and the Sky”
Yoko Ono – Memory of Footsteps – Between My Head and the Sky – 2009,

Fatima Al Qadiri is an artist and musician who was born in Senegal, grew up mostly in Kuwait, and now
lives in the US. She has done lots of visual art, installation and video work, and she also produces music
under several names including her own. Her music reflects her complex multi-national upbringing, and
tries to look at the ways that various cultures see one another. Her debut album under her own name is
called “Asiatish,” the German word for “Asian,” and essentially it purports to be a kind of aural
travelogue through the music of China, but not traditional—instead, it’s a fantasy of China and greater
Asian culture as filtered through Western culture, movies, advertising, etc. Most of the tracks utilize
some traditional Asian instrumentation, but as filtered through Grime and R&B sounds. Here’s an
interesting track from the album called “Szechuan.”

Fatima Al Qadiri – Szechuan – Asiatish -

And finally, Michaela Melian is mentioned in Double Lives as part of a cohort of musician/artists from
West Germany whose multidisciplinary work coincided with the eventual dissolution of the Iron Curtain.
Her primary instrument is the cello, and she came to pop music after classical training, eventually
becoming one of the founding members of the band Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle, a band that went on to
challenge some of the more dystopian elements of the early industrial bands playing in early 80s Berlin.
In more recent times, her music has become more influenced by electronic dance music, and here’s an
example of that from her album Baden Baden, with a tune called Strasse

Michaela Melian – Strasse – Baden Baden

I hope you found some of the books we talked about today intriguing! And remember: we have lots of
other music books, histories, biographies, and much more for a huge variety of musical styles. And it’s all
free with your library card! Any questions? I’m always glad to help. You can reach me at
[email protected], or call the Polley Music Library at 402-441-8520. Thanks for tuning in, and I
hope to see you at the library soon!