“Are the events of music simply there or do we occasionally sense within them the voices of commentators that enunciate them.” (Abbate; 1991, 15).
Let’s talk about this concept of re-instating the hand-made using the example of a vinyl album released in 2006 by the now dead JDilla (James Dewitt Yancey), titled Donuts. The album is a collection of short edits of soul and funk songs, looped and cut together live on a sampler. It is important to consider that at the time the album was produced, JDilla was in hospital (he passed away three days after the album was released).
The album is heavily stamped with the artist’s own touches – recording the album live, adding errors, scratching, re-cueing the records, adding static, out of time loops, etc. At each song we are reminded that whilst “recordings exist without death, available for nearly infinite playback”, the producer, Dilla, can still be present (Gallope; 2006, 8). This album is an attempt to impress temporaility and ‘live-ness’ onto the continuous commodity of the record.
Gallope sees this drive for ‘live-ness’ as a response to the ‘cold-ness’ of digital recording.
“Performance suddenly appears nostalgic, more real, vulnerable, expressive, ephemeral or drastic. Modern musical performance, whether on the classical stage performing a composed work, touring an album, or reproducing a traditional style, it must be anxiously marked live, authentic, organic, real, as if to preserve the difference of humanity against the constant haunting of immortal, insomniac recordings that seem to proliferate in ever increasing numbers, seeming to come out of nowhere.” (Gallope: 2006, 9)
The liveness of Donuts transcends death of the artist brought about by recording, and in this case, death of the artists corporeality. JDilla demonstrates that the death of body does not equal death of social presence ”…in the absence of the body, social presence still persists, so challenging the current orthodoxy that our embodiment is essential to social membership” (Hallam, Hockey, Howath; 2001, 74). Discogs lists around 13 posthumous releases – he is still releasing albums, creating flows, spawing fansites, producing commodities after death.
