Not to mention the dynamic beat of various foreign songs, the recent domestic network hot songs such as "Insomnia Night", "Antidote", "Half-Life Snow", etc., their "DJ version" is more popular than the song itself.
On the other hand, the DJization of various old songs has also become a favorite scene in short videos. DJ music such as "Flying Song of the Earth" and "Let's Swing the Double Oar" arranged by the Douyin account "DJR7" almost occupied a small half of the background music of Douyin some time ago. "Don't be afraid of the old song soil, you are afraid of the old song with a DJ", and even outrageous songs can be made into a DJ version, and as long as you add a DJ, it is as if you have a traffic password.
The popularity of DJ version music makes people feel the powerful appeal of this dynamic music form. Under the trend of DJs sweeping everything, we may wish to continue to ask, why do people now enjoy giving songs "ADDED DJs"?
The so-called "DJ version" actually refers more to the "electronic version" of the song, that is, the electronic music version. DJ is not a musical style, but a kind of profession, the full name is disc jockey, the Chinese translation of "record jockey". They are usually responsible for singing and DJing on the radio or in nightclubs.
Since many of the music on such occasions has the nature of electric sound, it can enliven the atmosphere, and there is gradually a commonality between DJ and electronic sound. Here we are talking about "adding DJs", which is actually talking about electronic music. Moreover, a considerable number of DJ versions of songs, because of their cheerful and dynamic atmosphere, can be roughly divided into the category of "electronic dance music" under electronic music - that is, often referred to as "EDM". The interpretation of electronic music naturally becomes an important clue to crack this cultural phenomenon.
Electronic Music: Why "Everything Is a DJ"?
To answer this question, we need to start with the presence of the voice. Along the phenomenological path, some scholars emphasize the importance of sound sources, that is, the "presence" of sound. This can be traced back to the French philosopher Descartes' "I think, therefore I am"—when the self-evidentness of the whole world has been universally questioned by Descartes, only the presence of consciousness can prove the existence of this world. And sound is proof of the presence of consciousness. The French scholar Derrida declared in Sounds and Phenomena: "The privilege of presence as consciousness can only be... Particularly through the sound is established. "The voice becomes a proof of the existence of the spiritual body, and when a sound is heard somewhere, it is as if there is a living consciousness there, with me, with me.
However, the basic form of existence of current popular music is "non-presence", that is, there is no actual real voice as the source of sound, and the sound is emitted in the form of analog or digital signals, which become independent of the source. The French scholar Jacques Adali, in Noise: The Political Economy of Music, refers to the musical characteristics of the mechanical reproduction era as "repetition", in which records and music are able to copy sound through technical means into the hands of almost everyone, and we can turn on headphones or stereos to hear exactly the same songs. Some time ago, when QQ Music released Hu Yanbin's limited 2001 "digital vinyl" collection album, some people joked that they were all numbered, is black not vinyl meaningful? In this case, the sound is no longer a unique presence that expresses the presence of consciousness, but becomes an industrial product, a commodity, an object that can be edited.
Noise: The Political Economy of Music, by Jacques Adali, translator: Song Sufeng / Weng Guitang, edition: Henan University Press, September 2017
Of course, there is no shortage of phenomenological "non-presence" views in favor of sound. Pierre Fisher, a pioneer of electronic music, believes that the non-presence of sound is actually a good thing, which can reduce the disturbance of various external factors of sound. There is no need to think about where the sound is coming from and where it is going, but to listen intently to the sound itself. This is equivalent to pulling a curtain on the player and listening only to the sound. The sound thus becomes pure, forming a "pure sound". This line of thinking is called "reduced listening."
If you support this line of thinking, you may wish to ask, does "pure voice" really exist? In fact, the identification with the presence of sound inadvertently reveals the idea that sound is not just a physical vibration of sound waves, but an empirical existence in a cultural sense. People's listening to sound also carries the "residual meaning" of history precipitated in sound: if a particular sound conveys the presence of a specific consciousness, then "what kind of emitter should make what kind of sound".
Even in the non-presence era, this experience cannot be completely broken. Now the popular "how can your text be pronounced" in the text comment area of social networks is an example, and when you see what kind of text, you can automatically think of the sounds related to it. For example, when you see the words "Shandong Heze Cao County Cowhide 666", the classic voice of Mai Bo Lord Dashuo automatically appears in his mind.
The music field is no exception, Youku's band variety show "People from Strawberry Planet", after the first episode was broadcast, many fans thought that "arrangement is not good", some people can even say what kind of guitar the band should use, so that a certain melody is kept in the range of how many hertz, can achieve better results - this empirical judgment is entirely derived from the historicity contained in the sound. It is also true that the existence of residual meaning makes the meaning that the sound originator wants to convey and the understanding of the receiver always misaligned, and pure sound becomes impossible.
Shout Mai Bo Lord Dashuo, "Shandong Heze Cao County Cowhide 666"
But that's why Fisher explored electronic music. Electronic music has completely upended the human experience, and people have no way of predicting from which instruments, human voices, or what the next sound will be. Electric guitars, electronic keyboards, these plug-in instruments make the ear lose the existing judgment of sound. In 1919, when the Russian Leon Tremen invented the world's first electronic instrument, the "Tremen", everyone was surprised by this: strange appearance, strange timbre, special way of playing, let people experience here completely aphasia.
Synthesizers, samplers, these allow all sounds in life, even "non-musical" sounds, to become part of music. Snapping fingers, slapping, white noise... Almost every sound has been used in various songs, and even the vocals can be greatly modified. It was also because of the subversion of experience that electronic music was initially treated as "noise" – the New York Times commented that the 1953 Paris electronic concert was so confused that people were confused by the electronic sounds, and they had to compare it to the noisy sounds of trains entering the station and rewinding tapes.
Electronic music creates a "tremor" effect in the Benjamin sense, and people have to deal with new sounds that may come at any time. But for Fisher, it's good news. Because experience is not intervening, composers are free to use electronic elements and production techniques to create the effects they want and fully communicate them to the listener. The editing rights of the sound are entirely in the composer, so the "pure sound" can be made.
That's what makes electronic music powerful: it can encompass everything, replace everything, or modify everything. It allows music to be expressed as desired without worrying about the meaning of the sounds it collects themselves and what experience they create for the listener.
While the band was still controversial for the adaptation of the rock version of "Red Beans", electronic music did not worry about this problem at all: it could not only transform the lyrical slow song of "Is It My Voice" of Ao Qiye without violation, but also bless Wang Heye's fast songs such as "The Wind Blows", and even more could magically change the magic divine song of "Honey Snow Ice City Sweet Honey". This feature of electronic music has created a scene of "all things can be DJ".
However, behind the principle, we should also pay attention to the form of these current DJ songs: these DJ songs do not generate new meaning, but erase meaning. The intervention of electronic music in these songs is not so much a "reduction of listening" as it is a "reduction of listening"—"reduced" can also be translated as "reduced". For example, the recent hit song "Let's Swing the Oars", the original lyrics are like this:
Let's swing the oars and push the waves away.
The sea reflects the beautiful white tower, surrounded by green trees and red walls.
The song was originally an episode of the 1955 film Flowers of the Motherland. The childish children's voice and soothing melody create a childlike image of the team salute, the small red dot on the forehead, and the red scarf on the neck, which is a pure person, an enterprising person, and a successor. The sentence "Let us" echoes the content of the film: the advanced help and transform the latecomers to jointly build the country. However, the DJ version, with its restless drum beats, noisy reverberations, and the rapid repetition of the word "swing", completely hollowed out the song and turned it into a nightclub song with adult hints. It doesn't matter what the lyrics are, it doesn't matter how the melody is: no one cares whether it's "appropriate" to transform such a children's song into this form. The song has become a pure "hi up" and "shake up" emotional communication, which has become nothing except the infectious power of shaking the head.
Meaning is not modified, experience is not subverted, just "reduced". It is not difficult to find that most of the DJ version of the song is a meaningless "tu hi".
Tu Hi: Introverted performance
Serious musicians seem to have a particular dislike for Tu hi. In the first issue of the electronic music variety show "Instant Electric Sound", Da Zhang Wei directly eliminated a song "The King of Electric Music" performed by Wang Yilong, because this song is Tu Hi.
"Tu Hi" can hardly be attributed to a specific genre of electronic dance music. They may focus on the EDM house style, the magical lead tone, the "moving times" 4/4 beat drum beat, and the tireless back-beat bass, which constitute the basic elements of a dirt song. The routines of many Tu hi songs are much the same. Most of the songs produced by DJ Shen Nian present the same arrangement: a rush of drum beats, followed by a chorus, followed by the main theme of the lead. Many times, just listening to the beginning, I can't even distinguish whether I am listening to "Treading Mountains and Rivers" or "Half-Life Snow". It cannot be denied that Tu hi is easy to accept for most people, and even if it is disgusted, this trend of Tu Hi "going to the ground" is unstoppable.
This trend is clearly related to the popularity of short videos. The rise of short videos has led to the popularity of DJ Tuhi songs, most of which are used as background music, either card point dress-ups, or gesture dances, or simply "social shake" - creating atmosphere, highlighting performances, and becoming the primary task of Tuhi songs.
At the performance level, electronic music has a huge advantage. Sound is good at creating a sense of space. Since people perceive sound depending on their location and surrounding environment, sound is naturally the carrier of space, or even the maker.
And because the sense of hearing is not as clear and precise as the vision, space can only be presented in a vague posture in the sound, which has caused music to imagine and creativity in spatial interpretation. The "scene song list" in the music app reflects the creation of music on the space: what songs can be listened to when writing homework, what songs can be listened to in sports, and so on.
Da Zhang Wei in the electronic music variety show "Instant Electric Sound".
However, different music genres do not make space differently. In Listening Through Noise: Experimenting with the Aesthetics of Electronic Music, author Joanna Demers compares how symphonies are recorded with electronic music. Beethoven's symphonic recordings will have a fairly clear foreground, or core area of activity. The distance between the player and the listener is maintained at 5 to 30 feet, and the position of the recording device is centered according to the axis of the listener's ear, technically adjusted accordingly. In this way, the listener gets a sound experience like the scene of a symphony – the sound is at a certain distance from itself, it is treated as an object of appreciation, stable and harmonious. But the space created by electronic music is diametrically opposed, the presence of the foreground is canceled, the sound seems to roar from a very close place, the continuous drum beat and rhythm occupy the ear, mobilize your facial features, as if you are in the disco scene, the overhead light ball flickers, and involuntarily begins to shake and sway. It's an immersive space, especially when the meaning in a Tu hi song has been erased, and it's especially suitable for performance.
The paradox is also here, although the Tu hi song can make people enjoy the release of their own desire to perform, but it creates an introverted performance space. Along with the rhythm of Tu Hi, people's performance behavior in Douyin is mostly just a performance of one person, occupying a 6-inch mobile phone screen, and achieving the final effect through editing and synthesis technology. There are very few performance events for more than 3 people. Despite receiving thousands of likes and comments, there are no real live audiences for these performances. In other words, there is a clear distinction between this space and reality.
In fact, the card points, gesture dances or various types of "shakes" in the vibrato, the slightest touch to reality, will show a huge sense of incompatibility. Douyin blogger "Wang Bagua" is famous for jumping social shakes with the face of a bully, but these social shakes are popular in Douyin, and when invited to participate in live activities, they are evaluated by netizens as "awkward dancing posture". The Douyin account "Earthy Excavator" recently showed a video of a man jumping in front of a woman to shake the society, which was ridiculed as "directing traffic" - even if it is only from the perspective of an audience, this form of performance will seem extremely embarrassing. Recently, the awkward dance behavior in public places led by the Internet celebrity Teacher Guo and others is also popular, accompanied by the music New Joy Crossing Old Love (DJ Version), one or two people are awkward dancing in front of the crowd, this embarrassment has become the highlight of the performance, and it is also known as social.
It may be said that the performance space created by the Tu hi song is an almost pure "self-hi", which rejects all the reality except the performance subject, and only enjoys the brainless performance pleasure in front of the screen. It can even be said that the Songs of Tu Hi cannot be used as background music for square dance.
This is also the connotation conveyed by Tu Hi - meaningless music, stripping away the self-hi of reality. The "upper head" of this kind of music actually shows the psychological symptoms of the masses.
Indulging in dirt is both resistance and escape
The characteristics of musical expression and people's preference for musical forms often contain certain socio-political factors. In The Noise, Adali argues that, especially after entering the age of "repetition," music "became monologues, it became a kind of lonely listening, storing various social habits." Current music is no exception. In the current era of involution, loneliness and other keywords prevail, people's confidence in reality and ability to face reality seem to be weakening. If rock and roll has always implied people's resistance and resistance to reality, just as Cui Jian's anger and roar in his songs, then recent rock works seem to show the powerlessness of this resistance. TikTok's recently popular Lost Train Band's 2011 song "Train Diaries" — the rousing trumpet interlude is often used as background music — has the lyrics like this:
Ideal outside the window, couldn't find the direction to come in
I don't know if the confusion is the same as before
Ten years later, this "rock without momentum" has turned popular again, and it can't help but show people's attitude towards reality. And the folk song is also whispering about the heaviness and helplessness of urban life. Zhao Lei's "Drum Tower", which is also popular on Douyin, conveys the hardships and sufferings of wandering in a kind of foreigner's posture:
I stood on top of the drum tower, and all the prosperity had nothing to do with me
It's a crowded place, and I'm very ordinary
However, under the adaptation of Wang Heye, this song has become a romantic tune showing the city streetscape with a small bourgeois atmosphere, and Wang Heye's version of "Drum Tower" is mostly used as background music for street view videos. But at least, these songs still contain a desire to dialogue with reality and a tendency to reflect reality.
But in the DJ version of the Tu hi song, all connections to reality disappear. The song itself is meaningless, and the scenes shown in the song are equally extremely introverted. This seems to show that the listener is completely reluctant to come into contact with reality, preferring to levitate in mid-air and orgasm in the skull rather than stop the restless beat and look at the situation of their own reality.
In fact, the popularity of the DJ version of the song seems to show the picture depicted in Wang Lihong's "Our Song":
If reality is too dangerous, only music is safest
Take me into the dream and let the lyrics come true
Hidden in the Light, by Dick Herberdiger, translated by Xi Zhiwu, version: Bai Deya | Chongqing University Press November 2020
This may seem like a complete avoidance of reality, but at the same time, it may be seen as an extreme resistance to reality. If we think of the trend of DJ songs as a social subcultural phenomenon, then this is exactly what subculture shows as "two sides of the same body". The British scholar Herbdiger made this assessment of the subculture of contemporary society in his book "Hidden in the Light":
(Subculture) is a declaration of independence, a declaration of the other, a declaration of heterogeneous cultures, but also a rejection of anonymity, a rejection of subordination. It is essentially a form of resistance. At the same time, it is a confirmation of the fact of powerlessness, a celebration of powerlessness itself.
As a result, the Tuhi trend obviously presents a mentality: in this mediocre society full of involution, the only thing we can do as individuals is to immerse ourselves in the dynamic rhythm and the rhythm of electronic sounds, pretend to be full of emotions, and become an excited and restless living life in the illusion to face the world in front of us. But this also shows that it is the resistance to reality, so I use all my strength to reveal my rebellion in the high beat of rejecting reality, and maintain my vitality in the illusion.
Even if it is an illusion, but at least it allows us to stay away from the stressful reality, in such songs, let's be self-deprecating – this impulse that is still contained in the song is probably the biggest value of DJ Tu hi.
Author | Wang Kaiwen
Edit | Let's go Shen Chan
Proofreading | Xue Jingning