{"id":1382,"date":"2014-04-07T09:48:20","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T16:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=1382"},"modified":"2014-04-07T09:48:20","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T16:48:20","slug":"fandom-ownership-and-improvisation-a-triptych-on-improvisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=1382","title":{"rendered":"Fandom, Ownership, and Improvisation: A Triptych on Improvisation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7383\/13696778305_88ddaf9d3f.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\">I<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Last night Ally and I made the trek to Boulder to see the Brad Mehldau trio perform. I\u2019d seen Mehldau a couple of times back in LA (he\u2019s even released an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Largo-Brad-Mehldau\/dp\/B000068WXL\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1396888239&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=largo+mehldau\" target=\"_blank\">album titled after my favorite venue<\/a>). I hadn\u2019t paid attention to the fact that the show was Mehldau performing as part of a trio (with Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard on bass and drums respectively). I\u2019d expected something closer to this (akin to the direction of his most recent album <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Mehliana-Brad-Mehldau-Mark-Guiliana\/dp\/B00GULA0TY\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1396888043&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=taming+the+dragon+mehldau\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Mehliana<\/em>:\u00a0<em>Taming the Dragon<\/em><\/a>):<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Mrokp2Pmapg\" height=\"315\" width=\"560\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Aside from beginning with an original song, the entire show was a set of covers. From the Beatles to Gillian Welch to Radiohead, Mehldau\u2019s work weaves familiarity with the unexpected. It\u2019s interesting to listen to the audience reactions during jazz performances (something Paul F. Tompkins lampoons <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XKSMbPbuGYE\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>). There is usually laughter in two places in jazz shows. First, the audience will quietly laugh when they <i>know<\/i> a song. The excitement of familiarity when Mehldau launched into \u201cAnd I Love Her,\u201d for instance signaled that the audience <i>knew <\/i>this song. Conversely, the audience laughs when a line or solo goes in the complete opposite direction of where they expected. A mid-tempo solo that flies into high gear, a series of notes <i>outside<\/i> of the song\u2019s key, a start-stop drum solo. We find pleasure, surprise, and laughter in the familiar <i>and<\/i> the unknown. It is the mixture of these two that builds pleasure in the consumer here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>II<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Saturday, a day before the Mehldau show, I presented at the <a href=\"http:\/\/coteenlitconf.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Colorado Teen Lit Conference<\/a>. In my session, I mainly facilitated conversations around how participatory media can act as a tool of empowerment for YA readers. In one example (and as described in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Critical-Foundations-Young-Adult-Literature\/dp\/9462093962\/\" target=\"_blank\">my book<\/a>) I highlighted how <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cassandra-Clare\/e\/B001JRXWE4\/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1396888524&amp;sr=8-2-ent\" target=\"_blank\">Cassandra Clare<\/a> practiced and developed her YA-oriented writing through engagement with fan fiction communities. At the heart of this discussion are a bunch of complex issues revolving ownership, plagiarism, marketing and capitalism. Several in the room (myself included) discussed how we have successfully gotten kids to write powerful stories through adapting fan fiction models for the classroom. The number of <a href=\"http:\/\/nanowrimo.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">NaNoWriMo<\/a> submissions I got from my students who inserted themselves in their favorite <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cirque-Freak-Series-Collection-Nightmare\/dp\/1608840867\/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1396888596&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=cirque+du+freak\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Cirque Du Freak<\/i><\/a> or <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-Chronicles-Vladimir-Boxed-Books\/dp\/0142417092\/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y\" target=\"_blank\">Vladamir Tod<\/a><\/em>\u00a0settings was a powerful testament to how fandom can initiate and sustain writing.<\/p>\n<p>Writing is <i>hard<\/i>. Getting published even harder. Keynote speaker, A.S. King described the arduous process of getting her first novel in print:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AS_King\">@AS_King<\/a> wrote 8 novels in 15 years before she got her works published <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%23ctlc2014&amp;src=hash\">#ctlc2014<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Pgoerner (@pgoerner) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pgoerner\/statuses\/452560172381401088\">April 5, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\">Teachers steal all the time. Musicians <\/span><i style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\">cover<\/i><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\"> as a staple of their own repetoires. Without consciously building on successful models (and remixing what makes them successful), how can young writers develop a personal voice?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\">III<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Like Mehldau, last year when my colleague <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LeifSorensen1\" target=\"_blank\">Leif<\/a> and I saw <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Jason-Moran\/e\/B000APJTKM\/ref=sr_1_1_acs_ent_artist?qid=1396888808&amp;sr=8-1-acs\" target=\"_blank\">Jason Moran<\/a> in concert, his set was primarily a series of covers (including briefly schooling the attendees about the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lift_Every_Voice_and_Sing\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Negro National Anthem&#8221;<\/a>). Perhaps more striking is that Moran would begin many of his songs by scrolling through his iPod, playing a song through the house speakers and slowly begin playing <em>along<\/em> with the canonized recording. Eventually he would fade out the recorded song and he and his band mates would seamlessly move the song into a new, unexpected direction. Like Mehldau, this was a master of his craft playing along with canonical recordings. Thinking about this from a literacies perspective, I think there are (at least) two important reasons covers are so important in musical performance:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First: it is a signal to the audience familiarity. Audience members muttered and harrumphed when the first recognizable melodic lines of \u201cAnd I Love Her\u201d were played by Mehldau. Minutes later, the song was an unrecognizable, rejuvenating\u00ad\u2013and highly original\u2013samba.<\/li>\n<li>Second: it grounds the artist in a political, historical, cultural, social, <i>place<\/i>. Just as the audience can understand and recognize the familiar tropes of a cover, a musician can adhere to, respond to, or redefine the emotional voice from which a cover comes from. By starting with something pre-established, a cover song can create pathways and constraints for new work to emerge.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\">When an audience member requested <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pcJKpCEIXzk\" target=\"_blank\">Radiohead\u2019s \u201cParanoid Android\u201d<\/a> at last night\u2019s Mehldau show, it wasn\u2019t because he thought he was getting\u00a0 the \u201890s rock song version. It was because the piece was both familiar and utterly transformed. Likewise, when Moran launches into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hh1AypBaIEk\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cPlanet Rock\u201d by Afrika Bambaataa<\/a> it isn\u2019t because they are expecting to hear a hip-hop classic.<\/span><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VILKg0uTuow\" height=\"315\" width=\"420\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><i>All<\/i> compositions are grounded in complex matrices. The social, historical, cultural, and <i>political<\/i> intersect in the words we write, the notes we play, the lessons we teach. A cover of a standard, or a Beatles song, or a Radiohead hit, or a Harry Potter setting is a more blatant signal for readers and a powerful starting place in tone or message for the composer. This is what we need to consider (and teach) within a literacy context. Even when we compose <i>new<\/i> work, our words and ideas are influenced by the world around us. 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I\u2019d seen Mehldau a couple of times back in LA (he\u2019s even released an album titled after my favorite venue). I hadn\u2019t paid attention to the fact that the show was Mehldau performing as part of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Tell people this is awesome:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-email\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"\" class=\"share-email sd-button share-icon\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=1382&amp;share=email\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to email this to a friend\"><span>Email<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-facebook\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-facebook-1382\" class=\"share-facebook sd-button share-icon\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=1382&amp;share=facebook\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Facebook\"><span>Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-twitter\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" 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