I’m sure there were folk songs about the latter. But i’m not sure what the music referenced on this thread tells us because I, like most people, haven’t heard it.
The political aspect to this is to get people to produce or consume digital value for as much of the day as possible. Literally like extending your shift in a factory and then going late night shopping in a mall.
so what i categorically
don't want is songs, folk or otherwise,
about the process. that is the last thing i want. i want to hear those processes as materialised in the products. NOT reflexively.
and let me illustrate what i mea by using the last paragraph as an example.
from the consumers point of view the internet is facilitating a return (while we are not at work ourselves!) to a kind of simulacrum of slave societies. becasue we are minimising friction and wait time.
that is when we want to fulfill a desire to be entertained, or to own a product, we dont need to move. we click our fingers and it is there. whether it is a vacuum cleaner or the new song by the latest pop-nymphet. that is our experience of the internet.
now looked at from the political angle (which is real, shouldnt be ignored, is, as always, tragic)
none of this is frictionless any more than slavery is frictioneless. it depends on amazon warehouse workers, it depends on courier drivers, it depends on apple's chinese suicide factories, africas rare earth mines and so on and so forth. I AM NOT AND WOULD NEVER DENY OR GLOSS OVER THESE REALITIES PLS BELEIVE ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! there is a material basis to our immaterial experience)
but the extent to which this hidden underbelly will be audible in our music is, i think, minimal. what i expect to be audible is the frictionless aspect, and the shrinking of the time-lag between fulfilment and desire and CORRESPONDINGLY
the frustration and confusion when the most important desires are not undergoing the same process. sex and love and friendship and understanding etc etc etc are as hard as ever to come by.
this i expect to be able to see and hear in the products of our socieities.
does that make sense?
the repressed is there. it exists. but it is hidden in windowless warehouse. it is THE REPRESSED! the material substrate is swept under the carpet. it would be interesting to try and catch peeks of it but the whole nature of the repressed is that it is hidden out of sight.
