Good fiction involving music somehow

[Snaps]

i think it can be very powerful to use this music as inspiration or a backdrop or simply as space / vibe. but maybe too much of an overt association would be too close to, like you say, "cliche" territory. i personally would try to evoke those moods without too much, if any, mention of the music. anyone read the book from which Children of Men was adapted? does it mention dubstep at all?

I agree. I think that pushing it too hard is wrong and would be dry. Music is generally a sideshow in books and I like it when it's mentioned as it somehow concretes and adds a layer of sensation ( for the same reason that I like reading about food in books)

But there is a deeper sense to Grime and Dubstep. Like mms said, an intensity and tension that resonates and lingers. Maybe it's something to do with the bass driven nature of it, it always seems to be leading or pointing to some emotion or lost memory or something...it's hard to get at just what.

I definitely get your Children of Men reference. It has that wet and sorrowful feel, and it's full of weird happenings and loss. Did I hear from somewhere that their is a dubstep tune being played when the main character enters the pub. I'm sure their was a Dubstep reference...?

 

[Snaps]

i would try to keep it away from 'harsh reality' personally, one thing that dubstep and grime evoke for me are things above and beyond, and probably below reality, they're armoury and hall of mirrors at the same time, but not like those mirrored shirt things that sylvester used to wear. i think dubstep and grime are pretty different in emotion mood and intention in alot of ways too, dubstep is at its best kinda haunted and intense,tension release and bassweight are big in it, whilst grime is a kinda jerry built but complex rage machine to me.

What links the two genres, apart from the technical similarities, is this sensation of tension beneath both and I would add dissatisfaction.

I agree that the 'harsh reality' tag that goes with Grime and Dubstep is cheap and boring. This music is not great because it's made by, on the whole, people from poorer backgrounds but despite it. It's just great music.

Thanks for the helpful replies. I take note

 

[Tweak Head]

Sounds like a good project, Snaps. Thing is, though, don't you also want it to have some resonance with people that don't know what dubstep is?

To do that, you'll also have to describe the music, and not rely on the fact that the reader knows what it sounds like. So, more of a challenge, but if you can pull it off more rewarding I think, for you and for the reader. The reader learns something new and gets to use their imagination to figure out what the music sounds like so maybe has a more profound experience than someone who only has to maybe remember a dubstep track that they already know. Then maybe also they decide to check the music out for themself.

I think it's possible to describe music in a way that the reader can imagine it. Some reviews lead me to do that, and the music when you finally hear it is nothing like what you imagined.

Yeah that was a thought that I had. But really it isn't a traditional detective story. (i.e. hard bitten detective is sought out by a willowy blond to solve a case of intrigue) It's about this layabout kid whose into dubstep and grime who follows the trail of his recently disappeared uncle through a 24hr night day night period.

Basically Im just trying to get that strong sensation that dubstep and grime evokes for me and I guess all those who are into it, into my writing. It is London, in my opinion. It's the shadows, the street lights, the gossip about people, the concrete, the car engine's.

Sorry, Im not blowing my trumpet.
Im just looking for any helpful advice or interest from you guys on this forum whose ideas I respect about grime, dubstep, life and everything.

So any ideas what sensations and emotions dubstep and grime evoke for you guys?
What relation do you reckon ( if any!) it has to being London on May 4th 2007???

 

[gek-opel]

What would be impressive would be to allow the dubstep and grime to inform the writing itself, rather than exist as backdrop or as reference to environment (ie- urban) or personae as such... to take the wrongness of Grime, its angles and garbled vocals, its illogical anti-rhythms as the starting point for the prose itself say... the tension in grime ultimately expressed on the musical level is that of the rhythm itself, the way the flows sit spidery on the beat, the way the snares fall askance from the 2nd and the 4th beat... Dubstep meanwhile appears to be (at its best) about a between-state rhythm- the implication of velocity and torpor simultaneously, the difference between the main bass kick/snare pattern (half step) and the hihats/bass fx rhythmatics (double time). Somehow to fully express them outside of merely a SARF-luhnduhn set realism ordinaire would require the rhythmical devices of these musics to inform the flow of text and character itself, I guess...

 

[nomos]

paul gilroy has noted (i think in the black atlantic) that the his style is inflected by the repetitions, deferrals, etc. of the music he writes about. i like that idea a lot. doing it well is not necessarily that easy either. it would be interesting to assemble a collection of pieces written with music, in this way, from various places and periods.

 

[gek-opel]

Mmm- I imagine it would be fucking hard tho! It depends at how deeply you layer the allusion too, the rhythm of word against word, or the meta-structure of plot or whatever...

 

[nomos]

yeah that's true, though i suppose i was thinking more at the level of structure, narrative rhythm, etc. - less literal. though ralph ellison certainly does with jazz what you're proposing with grime and dubstep.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Couldn't the contrary question also be equally legitimately posed, given that so much fiction references or utilises music, whether narratively [some argue that the development of fiction's narrative structures parallel those of music], contrapuntally, or decoratively - from Joyce's Finnegans Wake to F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby?

Peter de Vries - REFERENCE TO POPULAR MUSIC IN THE NOVEL - The Author’s Perspective

Introduction

Music has played an important role in the fictional novel for centuries. The sheer number of novels using music as a central feature is evident in a recent bibliography of musical crime fiction that lists more than 600 such novels (http://www.lib.washington.edu/music/mystery.html). Music has varying degrees of influence in the novel. It can be the centre of a novel, as is the case in Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata, where Beethoven’s violin sonata works “subliminally on Tolstoy’s protagonist, its melody, amplitude, and rhythms unleash repressed instincts, opening the floodgates of the irrational sphere and leading him to the shadow world” (Knapp, 1988, p. 10). Music can also influence the structure of a novel. Specific examples of this include James Joyce’s use of the musical fugue in the Sirens episode of Ulysses (Hiatt, 2001), and Toni Morrison’s use of jazz in her novel of the same name, where “the words of the book are a compilation of sounds and the unnamed narrator acts as a soloist within the music of other voices” (Lesoinne, 1997, p. 151).

Music does not always have such an all-encompassing role in the novel. Music – particularly popular music – can play smaller, albeit important, roles. Music can comment on the mood of a period in time, as is the case with reference to popular music of the late 1950s in John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, where the musical references suggest “that note of brash young consumerism of the late 1950s” (Bodmer, 1988, p. 113). Reference to a particular song, album or performer can also act as commentary on a character’s emotional life, as is frequently the case in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, where Rob, the protagonist, refers to popular music in order to mirror how he feels about various relationships he has had with women. A character’s preference for a particular type of popular music may not only tell the reader something about a character’s emotional life, but may also reflect the age or generation a character is from. For example, in David Lodge’s Nice Work, “Vic’s middle-age vulnerability” is mirrored in his preference for middle-of-the-road ballads performed by female vocalists (Martin, 1998, p. 9).​

anyone read the book from which Children of Men was adapted? does it mention dubstep at all?

No, no mention. P D James' novel bears little relation to Cuaron's film adaptation, the latter a materialist subversion of the novel's Christian parable of resuscitation, baptismal redemption, and so on. [I would imagine that Dubstep for P D James is probably a form of walking/dancing peculiar to certain Dubliners!].

 

[nomos]

Couldn't the contrary question also be equally legitimately posed, given that so much fiction references or utilises music, whether narratively [some argue that the development of fiction's narrative structures parallel those of music], contrapuntally, or decoratively - from Joyce's Finnegans Wake to F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby?

True. Maybe what I'm actually after then is literature that uses music in a peculiar way, defined however you like, but aiming at instances where it's more than a motif, zeitgeist referent, etc. For instance, the role of music in High Fidelity is hardly peculiar (it's quite banal, really) whereas in Invisible Man it's used in a synaesthetic and hallucinatory exploration of the surreality of American race politics.

Frankly, I'm also asking, in part, because I never know where to look for new fiction to read.

 

[Ness Rowlah]

Try "Morvern Callar" as previously mentioned. Different class than "High Fidelity", Alan Warner's writing is better and his characters more human than Nick Hornby's. Nick's references are often mainstream; Alan's less so (do all those bands mentioned in the book really exist?).

Comparing the soundtracks reveals a couple of overlaps
like Stereolab and VU though:

Hi-Fi:
1. You're Gonna Miss Me - 13th Floor Elevators
2. Everybody's Gonna Be Happy - The Kinks
3. I'm Wrong About Everything - John Wesley Harding
4. Oh! Sweet Nuthin' - The Velvet Underground
5. Always See Your Face - Love
6. Most Of The Time - Bob Dylan
7. Fallen For You - Shiela Nicholls
8. Dry The Rain - The Beta Band Listen
9. Shipbuilding - Elvis Costello & The Attractions
10. Cold Blooded Old Times - Smog
11. Let's Get It On - Jack Black
12. Lo Boob Oscillator - Stereolab
13. Inside Game - Royal Trux
14. Who Loves The Sun - The Velvet Underground
15. I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever) - Stevie Wonder

MC:
1. Can: I Want More
2. Aphex Twin: Goon Gumpas
3. Boards Of Canada: Everything You Do Is A Balloon
4. Can: Spoon
5. Stereolab: Blue Milk (edit)
6. The Velvet Underground: I'm Sticking With You
7. Broadcast: You Can Fall
8. Gamelan Drumming
9. Holger Czukay: Cool In The Pool
10. Lee 'Scratch' Perry: Hold Of Death
11. Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra: Some Velvet Morning
12. Ween: Japanese Cowboy
13. Holger Czukay: Fragrance
14. Aphex Twin: Nannou

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

True. Maybe what I'm actually after then is literature that uses music in a peculiar way, defined however you like, but aiming at instances where it's more than a motif, zeitgeist referent, etc. For instance, the role of music in High Fidelity is hardly peculiar (it's quite banal, really) whereas in Invisible Man it's used in a synaesthetic and hallucinatory exploration of the surreality of American race politics.

Well yes, of course: that was the distinction being made - musical forms as structural to the narrative versus contrapuntal or much worse, decorative [most novels, like Hornby's].

Admitedly, I'm much better at this in relation to film than literature, though perhaps because literature provides so few examples, though I hope I'm wrong:

Kieslowski's Three Colours Blue: music is the narrative. Rare, very rare, in film history. [obviously, I'm omitting the film musical]
Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange: where music has a contrapuntal relation - an uneasy, paradoxical/ironic, or transcendental relation to mise en scene
Most Hollywood and "indy" movies [including most concert films/music biogs]: Decorative, reassuringly cathartic [eg. in Forrest Gump when the protagonist returns to Alabama, you'll never guess what song the clever-clever film dudes feature on the lazy soundtrack!].

Speaking of which, this is an almighty howl [this guy has obviously never heard of Ballard or Burroughs or pulp modernism ... so much for the future of the "literary novel"]:

Film-makers use jump cuts, freeze frames, slow motion. Musicians remix, scratch, sample. Can't we writers have some fun as well?

Jeff Noon sets out his manifesto

[ ... ]

Hip-hop DJs have a phrase to describe the detailed, moment to moment controlling of a set of turntables, celebrated in the classic early track by Gang Starr, "DJ Premier in Deep Concentration". The post-futurist novel will employ just such a concentration in its use of language.

At the same time, it will utilise a fluid, organic structure, a network of storylines. It will be experimental, and yet will place a firm accent on the portrayal of human desires. It will be Raymond Chandler writing Ulysses, James Joyce writing The Big Sleep. It will move away from lazy cynicism and nihilism. Post-futurism reveres the narrative imagination. If the English novel is truly dead, we should place a flower on its grave, trample down the dirt. Now is the time to raise up the fragile, blossoming ghost.​

 

[mms]

paul gilroy has noted (i think in the black atlantic) that the his style is inflected by the repetitions, deferrals, etc. of the music he writes about. i like that idea a lot. doing it well is not necessarily that easy either. it would be interesting to assemble a collection of pieces written with music, in this way, from various places and periods.

i just realised paul gilroy lives just down the road from me and i see him all the time on the street.
sorry to destablise this...


i think sound / recording / the layers of production are interesting things to play with, ie diva, and the motorbike scene at the beginning, the whole of the conversation, alot of the early experimental films of brakage etc, as wel as stuff like stakker humanoid, right up to the new gang gang dance dvd retina riddim are all things worth bringing into play with music and literature and film.

 

[Peak]

paul gilroy

Not got a copy of the Black Atlantic to hand, but from memory Gilroy uses music to great effect as a way of writing historically - he illustrates the Black Atlantic idea itself via the Impressions' 'Proud of you', linking it to Rebel MCs version of the tune as 'Proud of Mandela' - then closes the loop with a quote from Mandela himself, in the US after his release from prison, saying in a speech how inspired they were in S.Africa by black American soul in the 60s. Chicago/Caribbean/London/Soweto - the tangled cultural threads of black atlantic consciousness - unless I'm making all this up from faulty memory...