A special dialogue that explores the current location of music criticism that is "serious" in a memory-loss society that repeats "materialization" on SNS, Part 2

Haruka Kudo, the representative of the company, and Shigetsugu Hosoda, a music critic

Founded by Haruka Kudo in 2017, Company is an up-and-coming independent publisher that has published a total of eight books targeting minor music. I talked with Mr. Kudo about the content of the activity and the current location of music criticism. In the second part of the dialogue article, we delved into the notable parts of Takayuki Nakamura's "The Form of the Soul, Colette Magny's Theory," which is the latest issue of Company Inc. and which spells out the footsteps of the great French singer Colette Magny. [Photo] Company's book "Soul Form Colette Magny Theory" The topic has further expanded to the role of music criticism and publishing in this era. Nowadays, smartphones and SNS have become widespread, and anyone can freely send information about music. Music-related words are mass-produced every day at a dizzying rate, which can be said to be a supersaturated state of information or a visualization of human desire to speak. We discussed the relationship between music and text in those times, and the possibility of music criticism. What emerged from this was the question of how to secure a route for carefully accumulating memories in an Internet society that has almost fallen into memory loss. (Naritsugu Hosoda) ■ What you can see through Colette Magny Hosoda: At the end of last year, "The Form of the Colette Magny" written by Takayuki Nakamura, a French scholar, was published. Except for translations and disc guide books, it is also the first single work by Company. This is the first book with a cover at Company. Also, Colette Magny is a French singer who is known to everyone, and almost no one has picked it up until now except Toshiharu Osato. I think it is unique to the company to publish as a book with such an object as the theme. Kudo: It's surprising to be able to write about minor subjects like Colette Magny at the academic level, and I think it's a breakthrough that it became a book. Of course, "Albert Ayler Fifty Years Later", edited by Mr. Hosoda, also contains academic-level articles, but as a book, it is a compilation of the texts of various writers and narrators, so it's a little more. Wrong. Also, Colette Magny's book was going to be published from the beginning when the company was founded, and originally I was thinking of publishing a translation. But even in his native France, Colette Magny is not so famous. As a public image, it is a star singer who left the hit song "Merokoton" released in 1963 at the beginning of the activity, a person who sang a political song, that is, it has remained in the 1960s. .. But this time, Mr. Nakamura wrote about the relationship between free jazz and Colette Magny. This is probably the first attempt in the world, and I think it is unique in that it inherits the achievements of Mr. Osato who delved into the relationship with free jazz. Hosoda: Colette Magny died in 1997, but at that time, the French media seemed to show only the video of singing "Merokoton" in a memorial program. Also, I think that what makes "Soul Form Colette Magny Theory" interesting is that it is written so that you can understand the flow of free jazz in France at the same time as the critique of one musician. I was able to understand why left-wing and dissident things were associated with free jazz. Kudo: That's right. What I found most interesting in this book was the part about the relationship with free jazz musicians. Especially since the early 1970s, Colette Magny seems to have been attacked not only by the right wing but also by the left wing. She broke up with "politicalism" because she experienced something like Geba and was mentally involved, but after that her album was shared with the Free Jazz Workshop. It's a work. The jacket is an illustration of an elephant gently supporting her ass with her nose from behind her, taking her hand to help Colette Magny recover again. What I can say from this co-production is that the free jazz workshops, of course, are politically left-wingers, but they were not discourse-level "politicalists." I think that area is particularly important, and in general, it's easy to talk about the connection between free jazz and leftist ideas in a stereotypical image. Mr. Nakamura carefully examines a completely different way of looking at it. Hosoda: Originally, Colette Magny came into contact with the left wing only because it was a group that was critical of capitalism that was the recipient of non-commercial music, and political freedom and revolution were music. It wasn't necessarily tied to that. Kudo: That's right. Following Mr. Nakamura, Colette Magny is not political but human. He's the one who has been exploring the compatibility of speaking for her marginal voice and advancing her musical quest throughout her life. That's why I think "Soul Form Colette Magny Theory" is very important when thinking about free jazz. Hosoda: Because it's free jazz, it doesn't always have a dissident idea, and even if it's politically turned to the left, it's possible that it's musically turned to the right and trampling minorities. Including such aspects, it can be said that "Soul Form Colette Magny Theory" has a range that exceeds the criticism of one musician. Also, as I first learned from reading this book, Colette Magny is bisexual, isn't it? In that sense, it is worth reading now. Kudo: Usually, when it comes to musician's critique, the fans mainly read it. But probably few people were originally fans of Colette Magny. However, I think there are a lot of things that can get caught even for non-fans. Hosoda: It's different from a book that expresses my feelings for musicians. Of course, you can see why the person named Colette Magny created such unique music. But at the same time, through Colette Magny, the actual issues to be considered now are also presented. With that in mind, it is also common to other books published by Company. The subject to be taken up is minor, but the question being asked is not a maniac at all, but rather it can be said that issues common to all humankind have been identified. ■ Music discourse in a memory-loss society where "materialization" is widespread Kudo: Nowadays, not only paper magazines and books, but also web media and SNS are full of music discourse. Isn't there "news" in Internet slang? It means to liven up the place performatively. New "news" are buzzing on SNS almost every day. However, I always think that I have to find a way to avoid ending with such "material". Hosoda: SNS is really a mixture of boulders, and some accounts continue to energetically post reviews of soundboards and live reports, and in some cases they are much better as introducers than bad critics. , You may be surprised by the sharp point of view. This may be a music critic that has been updated as the media environment changes in an era when everyone can become a critic, but on the other hand, there are also structural problems. This is because information transmitted through web media and SNS is basically not accumulated. The text posted from the design of both Twitter and Facebook will be swept away. Kudo: That's right. That is likely to end with "news". Hosoda: Even if there is a "story" that attracts a lot of attention because of the terrible buzz, no one remembers it after a week. And when I forget it, I repeat the same thing again. That's a good example of a topic like "whether music criticism is necessary", but it's regularly talked about on SNS. Then, people who have a family word come out and begin to talk about "What is music criticism?" However, since the content of the talk is a repetition of the past, it does not lead to a particularly productive discussion. Such things are repeated endlessly. Kudo: Everyone seems to have lost their memory in the discourse space on the Internet. I couldn't accumulate memories, and every time "news" became a topic, I returned to the beginning. I've been on Twitter for the last few years, but I think people who have been doing it for over 10 years have seen the same scenery many times. Hosoda: Of course, if you are using SNS as a tool for communication, it may be okay because you can enjoy interacting with various people even if you are in a state of memory loss. To "make a story" means to make it a communication tool, isn't it? However, SNS also has an aspect as an information transmission / sharing / collection tool, and in that case, the same information continues to be repeated by "materialization" every few months to several years, which makes me feel a little barren. Moreover, that is not limited to SNS. Except for pay sites, web media basically earns from advertising expenses, so anyway, the purpose is to earn the number of PV in a momentary wind speed. For that purpose, it is desirable that it is consumed as "material", and it is consumed as soon as possible, and the next day it must be earned in another article, creating a cycle that is structurally unmemorable. .. And when I forget it, a similar article buzzes again. Both SNS and many web media are in a world where it is the law of victory to produce "material". Kudo: In the first place, web articles themselves may not be very connected to memory. After all, the interface is a smartphone or a personal computer, so you probably see the same screen. On the other hand, paper magazines and books have different shapes as things, so they have a physical aspect and are easy to connect with memory. Young people who have never touched paper media may have devised a different mnemonic technique, but research results show that paper actually activates the brain region related to memory rather than smartphones. There is also. It is difficult to remember without personalizing the experience. Hosoda: For example, liner notes helped to personalize the experience not only because the sound was accompanied by text, but also because it was textual information that was physically linked to the album. Now that the album itself has become a mere ghost, the traditional role of liner notes is ending, but the commentary or audio commentary on the subscription album page is in that sense. It seems difficult to replace the traditional liner notes. So, right now, I'm doing a solo exhibition of Christian Marclay at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, but Marclay focuses on the fact that sound is closely related to visual culture and textual information other than sound. Isn't it an artist? It means that visual information evokes sound, but it also means that sound is stored together with visual information in the first place. Based on that, it can be said that the act of reading the liner notes as it used to be was not only the act of understanding the explanation of music with the head, but also the act of memorizing the sound together with the text. Kudo: With that in mind, I think it's important to avoid memory loss without being swayed by "materialization." Of course, I don't think the "material" itself is bad. It can be useful as a trigger. Recently, there was a case where a person introducing a book on TikTok got used to a book reviewer and stopped working, but I think it would be nice to have various entrances. The problem is that it ends up with "story", so it seems that they are called "BookToker" who are active in TikTok, but publishers all rely on them. Is dangerous. I think that is the one who should be criticized. ■ Working on "Majires" to organize the context Kudo: It certainly leaks from the perspective of music criticism, but one of the most important books for me is the disc guide book "Mondo Music". When I was a high school student, I found it at a second-hand bookstore, bought it, and read it, but I was introducing records from a different perspective than the value judgment of good / bad. This book had a listening attitude that made it interesting that such works were released in the format of records, and when I read it, there was a tremendous change in consciousness. Did you find that music is not something you just enjoy listening to? This book has been serialized up to the third edition, but it was first published in 1995, which is in parallel with the so-called DJ culture. In other words, this book has an attitude of how to enjoy when you encounter something different or strange while digging various records. Hosoda: LP records first appeared in the middle of the 20th century, so it's possible that recordings for nearly half a century had accumulated in the 1990s. In the meantime, for example, in the case of jazz, there is "Masashi" that existing jazz journalism has talked about based on the criteria of "whether it is good or bad as jazz", and the records leaked from it are ignored as "valueless". I came. And there were a huge number of such "valueless" records. However, "Masashi" is only spoken based on a specific value judgment, and if the criteria are changed, another genealogy can be traced. Rare groove in DJ culture dismantled / reconstructed the history of jazz on the basis of "whether or not it can dance", and added new value to records that were "valueless" until then, and Mondo Music is also "strange". By setting a new standard of "whether or not", we rediscovered past records that had been ignored so far. However, in the case of DJ culture, the traditional order was broken by stripping the text from the record that formed "Masashi" in connection with the text and leaving it to the physical sense, whereas in the case of Mondo Music. There may be a difference that has created a new connection between text and records. Kudo: Whether it's DJ culture or Mondo music, I think this has been said repeatedly, but I think it's important to keep in mind that it disregards the historical context. That is the possibility that it will end up being "materialized" as sampling material. It can be said that "Mondo Music" is just a collection of records as a kind of "material". Actually, I'm currently making a mood music book at Company, but when it comes to listening to mood music, it's almost always not the case. About 90% of the records are made with inertia and compromise (laughs). But instead of judging it as good / bad, first try it for fun. And I think it's very important to show the context, such as why those records were made, what the innumerable mood music records were made, and so on. is. In other words, the work of properly organizing the context of "Mondo Music", which is a collection of records as "material". So to speak, it may be the activity of the company company to "seriously" deal with "material" (laughs).

Shigetsugu Hosoda