Exper­i­men­tal music, by its very nature, stays out of the main­stream. All styles of music begin as exper­i­ments, but most soon­er or lat­er, in one form or anoth­er, find their way to pop­u­lar accep­tance. But if one liv­ing musi­cian per­son­i­fies the intrigu­ing bor­der­lands between the pop­u­lar and the exper­i­men­tal, Björk does: since at least the 1980s (and, tech­ni­cal­ly, the 1970s), she has steadi­ly put out records that con­sti­tute mas­ter class­es in how to keep push­ing forms for­ward while main­tain­ing a wide fan base, seem­ing­ly giv­ing the lie to John Cage’s dic­tum that mak­ing some­thing 20 per­cent new means a loss of 80 per­cent of the audi­ence.

Cage, an icon of min­i­mal­ist exper­i­men­tal music who still caught the pub­lic ear now and again, does­n’t appear in the BBC’s Mod­ern Min­i­mal­ists [part one, part two], but only because he died in 1992, five years before it aired. But this Björk-host­ed whirl­wind tour through the com­pa­ny of a selec­tion of inno­v­a­tive min­i­mal­ist com­posers of the day actu­al­ly feels, at points, a bit like Cage’s 1960 per­for­mance of Water Walk on I’ve Got a Secret: we not only hear them talk, but we hear their music, see them make it, and get an insight into the way they work and — per­haps most impor­tant­ly — the way they think.

“When I was asked to do this pro­gram,” Björk says in her dis­tinc­tive Ice­landic inflec­tion, “it was very impor­tant for me to intro­duce the peo­ple I think are chang­ing music today.” That ros­ter includes Alas­dair Mal­loy from Scot­land, Mika Vainio from Fin­land, and, most famous­ly, Arvo Pärt from Esto­nia. Björk not only draws out their musi­cal philoso­phies, but responds with a few of her own.

“Peo­ple have moved away from plots and struc­tures, and moved to its com­plete oppo­site, which is tex­tures,” she says over a series of post­mod­ern land­scapes, “A place to live in, or an envi­ron­ment, or a still­ness.” And the role of the musi­cian in that mod­ern real­i­ty? “To take these every­day nois­es that are ugly, and make them beau­ti­ful. By this, they’re doing mag­ic.”

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Björk’s 6 Favorite TED Talks, From the Mush­room Death Suit to the Vir­tu­al Choir

Hear the Album Björk Record­ed as an 11-Year-Old: Fea­tures Cov­er Art Pro­vid­ed By Her Mom (1977)

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Of all the var­i­ous types of pro­fes­sion­al explain­ers out there, none may come across as more clue­less than the tele­vi­sion news reporter faced with a minor­i­ty youth cul­ture and try­ing to account for its existence—one he or she had pre­vi­ous­ly been unaware of. Every descrip­tion gets reduced to the broad­est of judge­ments, easy stereo­types fill in for appre­ci­a­tion. The larg­er the media out­let, the more these ten­den­cies seem to man­i­fest; in fact a string of such sen­su­al­ized reportage put togeth­er seems to con­sti­tute both the rise and the fall of a cor­po­rate news career.

All of the above should pre­pare you for what you are about to see in ABC’s 20/20 spe­cial “Rap­pin’ to the Beat” from 1981. Inves­tiga­tive reporter Steve Fox jour­neys into the world of rap music, a form—his con­de­scend­ing co-anchor tells us in a back-hand­ed remark—“so com­pelling, you’ll nev­er miss the fact there’s no melody.” “It’s a music that is all beat,” he says, “strong beat, and talk.” With the tone estab­lished, enter Fox to tell us that Blondie’s “Rap­ture” is the main rea­son rap caught on. It only gets worse. I sup­pose you could blame Deb­bie Har­ry, but she didn’t ask to be the first voice of rap we hear in a 20/20 spe­cial. That deci­sion was the spe­cial purview of “Rap­pin’ to the Beat”’s pro­duc­ers.

But like all archival film and video of emerg­ing cre­ative move­ments, these clips redeem them­selves with footage of the scene’s pio­neers, includ­ing a per­for­mance from a 22-year-old Kur­tis Blow and some ear­ly breakdancing—or, as one NYC Tran­sit cop calls it, a riot. The sec­ond part, above, gives us some insight­ful com­men­tary from NYC radio DJ Pablo Guz­man, folk­lorist John Szwed (who wrote the defin­i­tive biog­ra­phy of Sun Ra), and syn­di­cat­ed rock colum­nist Lisa Robin­son, who reminds us of how “very black and very urban” rap is, then goes on to say, “peo­ple hat­ed rock and roll 15 years ago.”

It’s cer­tain­ly true that 15 years or so after this clum­sy attempt at cap­tur­ing the moment, rap and hip-hop became ubiquitous—at a time when punk rock also hit the sub­urbs. Punk also had its 20/20 moment in the late 70s (above); it sym­bol­ized, the announc­er tells us, “the dread­ful pos­si­bil­i­ty of riot which has always seemed to cling to rock and roll.” Met­al got the Ger­al­do treat­ment in “Heavy Met­al Moms”—the exam­ples abound. Which of them is more banal, con­de­scend­ing, or just painful­ly awk­ward is impos­si­ble to say, but they make fas­ci­nat­ing win­dows onto the medi­a’s con­sis­tent­ly weird­ed-out response to out­siders they can’t ignore. As a coun­ter­point, check out the way Fred Rogers wel­comed to his show a 12-year-old break­dancer or a cou­ple of exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic musi­cians, mak­ing no effort to be cool, knowl­edge­able, or detached, only kind and curi­ous. It’s just my opin­ion, but I always thought TV news need­ed more Mr. Rogers and less.… what­ev­er the jour­nal­is­tic approach in “Rap­pin’ to the Beat” is sup­posed to be.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Fight For Your Right Revis­it­ed: Adam Yauch’s 2011 Film Com­mem­o­rates the Beast­ie Boys’ Leg­endary Music Video

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.