The Spectre of Originality

About a year ago, I wrote a short article for my student paper on originality and authenticity. I was frustrated by the proposition to write an article on the lack of originality in contemporary music, quickly steering my focus toward the necessity for authentic engagement and reflection and the plurality of authentic expression. Despite being confined by an oppressively short word count, I was impressed with the direction of my article and remember musing about whether it would signify a resurgence in my own reviews and reflections on music and culture. I suppose I took my time, but I can at least partially attribute that article for this predictable, impulsive return to the desolate ghost town my blog has transformed into.

A recent interview with James Blake touched on the subject and inspired me to return to the question of originality and its place within contemporary music. The British producer’s signature brand of atmospheric, synth-driven R&B has largely been touted as distinctive and unique, so it’s no wonder he was asked what it means to be ‘truly original’. His first response caused a chuckle from his interviewer: ‘True originality is just being incredible at hiding your influences’. It’s not an original answer of course, art historians and cultural critics have long asserted that ‘original’ works are largely a product of influence and imitation which may be arranged in a new pattern or order but ultimately function as reproductions of specific texts and memories. There is a great article on the topic by Clara Bellini which I, in turn, am borrowing from, which highlights the concept of originality as a value within a western artistic canon, inextricably tied to Romantic ideals of the ‘genius’ even as these geniuses learned and developed their styles and signatures from certain music schools, predecessors, and conventional structures.

It can be a difficult task tracing back the original innovator or the pioneer. Whilst its common to credit The Beatles for popularising tape-loop experimentation, a cornerstone of the psychedelic sounds of their later records, avant-garde composers had utilised tape loops as early as the 1940s, and blues and rock artists had similarly incorporated distortion to their guitars, evoking emotional grit and power in their recordings years before Liverpool’s cultural behemoth had even formed. Pivoting to the world of food, it is harder still to trace the creation of dishes across neighbouring cultures and cuisines where ingredients were traded and shared across borders which wouldn’t be drawn for hundreds of years. No, Israel did not create za’atar, or any number of other culinary claims which have extraordinarily been asserted online in recent years. It is in fact a Palestinian spice blend, although the original ‘author’ of the ingredient is unsurprisingly unknown. In my personal head-canon, an amateur Arabic cultural theorist was hungry midway through their latest manuscript whether originality was important to 12th century poetry and concocted an unfamiliar blend of spices in their kitchen. Who knows?

Original innovators and inventors can exist of course, but the point which James Blake humorously reiterated is one concerned more with the creative process than that of the creative product. Whether we are observing an original blend of spices or the release of a new song, the ingredients or instrumentation are reproductions of existing structures and processes, however novel their particular combination or arrangement. Drying, crushing, blending. Arranging, recording, producing. These are all conventional processes, within which certain techniques or choices are made following or rejecting more specific stylistic trends and conventions. Returning to The Beatles, it was the band’s innovative manipulation of tape loops which produced the iconic psychedelic soundscape on a track like Tomorrow Never Knows. The song has been hailed as revolutionary in its defiance of popular music conventions which at the time treated the recording studio as an environment only to capture live performances, ready to be broadcast on the radio and cut onto vinyl. The Beatles were among the first to utilise the studio and its recording tools as instruments in their own right, certainly in a pop setting. In breaking from this convention however, the band innovates through inversion or subversion, their originality coming from their reaction to common practices in popular music. To defy a convention, the convention must first exist as a reference from which to deviate from. Originality then, is relational.

Bellini’s article offers something close to a discursive analysis of originality, exploring this relation between source and reference, innovation and convention. She contends that new works of art engage in ‘conversation with tradition’, deriving and defining their originality in a comparative dialogue with ‘what came before’. Essentially, an individual work of art (be it a song, a painting, a film etc.) can be understood within a broader conventional, cultural, and stylistic context, in which its elements and themes reproduce the discourse around the artwork, whether complementary or contradictory. It’s perhaps a cynical way of viewing art, at least if you remain wedded to the ideal of originality and the importance of the author, but I would urge you to take a step back. When we find ourselves resonating so profoundly with a work of art that we are possessed in some way to recreate it, to imitate and to be influenced, we discover the beauty of collectivity within the artistic process. Even if it is only one tiny element: a specific guitar tone, a particular vocal inflection, a captivating metaphor; when we produce our own art we are engaging in a conversation which is bigger than us. We are contributing to the discourse, to the canon. That is culture.

Of course, there are a host of ways in which these influences can be abused and misused, particularly when an artist becomes derivative or extractivist. When an artist imitates all the characteristics of another's work, without a sufficient degree of 'original' influence or distinction, we call them derivative. Or, as we are increasingly critical of, artists may appropriate the elements or conventions of another culture insensitively, often misrepresenting and diminishing that culture (cough, read Edward Said, cough). It is really these two practices which give imitation and influence a bad name, although it is perpetually encouraged by a music industry which chases trends and consumerism over artistic expression and authentic engagement. When artists do engage with themselves and with their influences however, it can produce a beautiful celebration of the human collective which will subsequently influence more artists to comment and create. As members of broader cultural audiences, we are eager to engage in the familiarity of influences we recognise and the delightful unfamiliarity of broken conventions and the novel meetings of different influences and elements. It’s one reason I am finding so much to love in the latest album from James Blake, the wonderfully eclectic Trying Times. It serves as a celebration of Blake's expansive career over the last decade and a half of experiments in electronic, pop, hip hop and R&B, reintroducing and updating many of the sounds and textures he has explored on previous albums. It is also gorgeously arranged, heart-achingly vulnerable, and flawlessly produced alongside his longtime partner Jameela Jamil, so I implore you to listen to it. It is among the best new albums I have heard this year, and I will likely be sharing more thoughts soon.

In the meantime anyway, if you have read all this I do appreciate the engagement. I have been flirting with the idea of returning to the blog format to explore my current thoughts and impressions of music and culture, and I have definitely missed writing here. I will make no promises of consistency, I am far too busy with my degree for that, but I do hope this marks a revival of something which has always brought me a great deal of joy and compliments. Ah sweet words of affirmation.