[Previous entry: "Virtual Cities"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Another Carnival"]
06/25/2005 Archived Entry: "Wu-Tang"
Wu-Tang
It's a hot Michigan Saturday. I've been inside reading the RZA's The Wu-Tang Manual. One of the things I liked most from Kodwo Eshun's More Brilliant Than the Sun was his remark that music is theory; we don't have to think of music in terms of theory. It's theory already. I've written about hip hop and funk as writing theory (the funk piece in the Florida School collection I just finshed putting together with Marcel). I see that in the RZA's work.
The Wu-Tang Manual is a very theoretical work which breaks down the entire project of invention. This is a how-to book (in the Naked Lunch tradition). How to invent a practice. Put it together as such:
Philosophy. Behind every idea, there is a philosophy. Here we get a mix: Asian martial arts and capitalist insight (marketing a brand name; creating desire through the market).
Influence. Too often we teach only to the area of study we work in. This limited move is a failure to understand the way influence comes from unlikely places. Thus, technical/professional writing, for instance, often only looks within by only using a textbook geared as such (the Web as professional writing flies in the face of such thinking, but alas that point is not yet understood). The RZA notes how influences come from all over, many have nothing to do independently with the area one works in. For hip hop, we see comics, Kung Fu movies, chess, specific directors (John Woo, Jarmusch, Tarantino), video games, politics, etc.
Style. All practices have style. The Wu-Tang's aggressive style is the result of the above, but also of specific histories and cultural foundations.
Identity. No practice exists without identity. The issue of the alter-ego (role playing in the McLuhan sense) is highlighted throughout the book and especially in the first few pages of member descriptions. Wu-Tang’s identity (itself the alter-ego appropriation of the influence of a specific Kung Fu flick) is tied to the notion of the alter-ego, to role playing.
Language. The slang is not superfluous. It is a part of what makes the Wu-Tang project function. Each practice brings its own language (or variation) into the exchange of ideas. That is rhetoric.
Annotated work. Necessary to the extent that you show your practice and demonstrate what it is doing. Thus, the annotated lyrics the RZA provides.
Technology. What technology drives your practice? Technology is a vague term; but no practice emerges out of a non-technology space. Hip hop is connected to computer technology. For me, that connects it more profoundly to writing (the first sampler, the Mellotron, is invented at the same time composition studies claims its own revolution in thinking. Ha! Missed moment indeed). The computer has re-directed Aristotelian topoi. It is all chora today. Samplers foreground that point. Even when I read for pleasure, I find pedagogical insight. All pleasure is pedagogical. I easily see the above as work to experiment with in any level writing course. Our project this semester: Invent a practice. Our model: The Wu-Tang Manual. Using these areas we note above, fill in the sections with your own choices. Then use those sections to invent a new practice (musical, spiritual, writing, belief, business, etc.).
