April 27, 2018

"There is a movement here, called JBPWave, which are mixes of Jordan Peterson over this music. This one is an explanation by a British journalist, of what’s happening."

That's a quote from I don't know who, passed along to me by a reader I do know, and linking to this:



ADDED: "This music" — according to the email — refers to "Lofi," defined as "a new offshoot of hip-hop." My understanding of the music term "lo-fi" was not something new or growing out of hip-hop. I remember it as something from the 1990s that grew out of indie rock... but, obviously, the same word could be used independently by 2 different things, either out of ignorance, a desire to confuse, or based on a belief that the earlier usage was more or less dead.

I looked up "lo-fi" in Wikipedia, which confirmed my understanding:
During the 1990s, the media's usage of the word "indie" evolved from music "produced away from the music industry's largest record labels" to a particular style of rock or pop music viewed in the US as the "alternative to 'alternative'". Following the success of Nirvana's Nevermind (1991), alternative rock became a cultural talking point, and subsequently, the concept of a lo-fi movement coalesced between 1992 and 1994. Centered on artists such as Guided by Voices, Sebadoh, Beck, and Pavement, most of the writing about alternative and lo-fi aligned it with Generation X and "slacker" stereotypes that originated from Douglas Coupland's novel Generation X and Richard Linklater's film Slacker (both released 1991). Some of the delineation between grunge and lo-fi came with respect to the music's "authenticity". Even though Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was well known for being fond of Johnston, K Records, and the Shaggs, there was a faction of indie rock that viewed grunge as a sell-out genre, believing that the imperfections of lo-fi was what gave the music its authenticity.

In April 1993, the term "lo-fi" gained mainstream currency after it was featured as a headline in the New York Times. The most widely-read article was published by the same paper in August 1994 with the headline "Lo-Fi Rockers Opt for Raw Over Slick"....
Rap is only mentioned in the "See also" links at the bottom of the article, as Cloud rap ("Cloud rap (also known as trillwave or based music) is a microgenre of hip hop music... typically characterized by its 'hazy,' lo-fi production") and SoundCloud rap ("SoundCloud rap is a music genre that originated on the online audio distribution platform SoundCloud... characterized as 'simplistic, subdued beats, often with snippets of strings and sometimes complemented with emo chords, paired with lyrics that ping-pong between braggadocio and nihilism, with lots of sex and odes to heavy narcotics').

Anyway, as to the use of Jordan Peterson's voice in that music, it reminded me of the time, back in 2005, that my voice — recorded by a student in my Federal Jurisdiction class — was used in a music recording. I love the musical repurposing of spoken word recordings. The very best thing in that category — as far as I know — is Glenn Gould's "The Idea of North" (which I dragged into the conversation last month (about a man who wouldn't listen to the news)) and also back in 2015 ("The country I come from is called The Midwest The North") and in 2009 ("It suddenly dawned on Conan O'Brien that the Palin speech is 'a poem'").

21 comments:

traditionalguy said...

The Intellectual Dark Webb cometh.

Wince said...

What's with the lobsters?

traditionalguy said...

Psychologist Peterson has long teachings about the Lobsters being very smart adapters.

Fernandinande said...

mandrewa said... Page 168 of some Peterson tome:
"The terrible unknown compels representation; likewise, the beneficial unknown. We are driven to represent the fact that possibility resides in every uncertain event, that promise beckons from the depths of every mystery."

Somebody apparently thought The Twilight Zone and X-Files were documentaries.

rhhardin said...

We are driven to represent the fact that possibility resides in every uncertain event, that promise beckons from the depths of every mystery.

"We" is the mark of an amateur.

Caroline said...

The video is 50 mins long! LOL!

Sebastian said...

""We" is the mark of an amateur."

Depends on what the meaning of "we" is.

Could be a valid claim in the context of a quasi-Jungian Voelkerpsychologie.

BarrySanders20 said...

The man has interesting ideas and expresses them well.

But this is creepy new age hero worship set to music that annoys after 45 seconds.

Ann Althouse said...

"The video is 50 mins long! LOL!"

I once arrived at a Grateful Dead show at the Fillmore East at midnight and didn't get out until we had to share the subway with the morning commuters. "Dark Star" must have been hours long. You were supposed to lose track of time in a state of mystical ecstasy. See if Jordan Peterson can make that happen for you, pouring his light into ashes, through the transitive nightfall of diamonds.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

YT: LoFi AllStars - Battleflag

Bilwick said...

Thanks for bringing lo-fi to my attention. Examples of it are on YouTube, and I've been sampling. Not sure how I feel about it yet; but if, in my dotage, I could become a fan of Trance, who knows?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Makes me think of one of my favorite Beatles songs.

Seems like Peterson is being turned into just one more cult figure.

mezzrow said...

Seems like Peterson is being turned into just one more cult figure.

That's what they told me the first time I paid any attention to Peterson. That was almost two years ago, now. Some cult, eh?

I'm not surprised it looks that way to you. If you hate what he's saying, that would be a sensible thing to say.

becauseIdbefired said...

Word Jazz by Ken Nordine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_ETFQKZ31g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYi07EhENJI

wildswan said...

"Jordan Peterson? He's a glitch in the matrix." I know people who might listen to him after they hear that. There could be T-shirts. The other day in the parking lot at Outpost an awful person with a ghastly black T-shirt with Gothic letters and swastikas and Satans on it pushed past me. I shrank against my car in horror and, trembling, read: "against principalities, against powers, against the lords of this age, rulers of this darkness." So you never know.

Ken B said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ken B said...

http://kenblogic.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-tide-is-turning.html

tim in vermont said...

I have been reading Twelve Rules, so I will use this thread as a hook. He agrees with me about the whole mockery of the betas thing that goes on in these threads and everywhere else. He points out studies that showed that if the dominant chimpanzee in a troop, or whatever you call them, solely uses his physical domination to lord it over the betas, they will form a coalition and overthrow him. The true and successful alphas don’t rub the beta’s nose in their victories, and make allies of the betas, friends even, which makes sense because it tamps down resentments.

I think that this applies to the self-described “incels.” The web is full of mockery of betas, taunts of how they can’t get laid, girls don’t want them, etc, etc, which is, of course, mostly bullshit. Given time, the late bloomers will have success. Betas do fine over time, it’s the gammas that are screwed. But we put out so much negative energy, and somebody is experiencing despair, they are going to identify with these “betas” the PUAs are always on about, it’s like a recipe for creating serial killers.

But none of us has any responsibility for our own actions in any of this! Its the fault of the fucking loser betas! Many of you guys are worse than liberals in some ways, with your need for chest beating, moral preening, all seeking out a frisson of that best feeling of all, superiority. A lot of you just preen on different motifs.

And yeah, if you read the book, he is trying to show a path for people, so he is taking on a role similar to Moses, Christ, Buddha, Confucius, et al. Well, he is trying to integrate the lessons of the great teachers, not supplant them and discard them. He is trying to bring hard won lessons of our history to the modern world. Of course he is going to be despised by people who want everybody to pretend that history never happened, like the left, and BTW, libertarians.

tim in vermont said...

BTW, dominant lobsters do take nightly strolls to taunt lesser lobsters, but lobsters can’t plot with each other to take on the big guy, they just seethe in resentment, it would seem. I would guess the dominant lobster also gets a shot of dopamine from watching his defeated rivals quake in his presence. You may draw your own conclusions.

Bilwick said...

Could you give examples, tim, of libertarians who pretend that history never happened? Bastiat? Spooner? Nock? Mencken? Hayek? Von Mises? Name names, please; cite some sources. I've been in the pro-freedom camp for decades and I'm unaware of such people. If anything, the libertarians I've read have been all too aware of history, and the seemingly eternal struggle of (using Rothbard's terminology) Power vs. Market.

Black Bellamy said...

Yes the old meaning is dead. If you google “lofi” there’s the google definition and the entry from Wikipedia on top, both discussing the full history of the term, focusing on its older meaning and discussing its indie rock origins. After that it’s just one YouTube video after another, all full of lowfi hip hop.