Mashup Poetics as Pedagogical Practice

Combining the vocals and backing tracks of what are usually rather disparate songs—often cognitively dissonant if sonically consonant—mashups explicitly embody musical collisions. Although many offer simple delights in their whimsical recontextualizations, bringing together unlikely collaborators through some clash of genre, mood, or theme, others seem to suggest a more pointed cultural critique. In doing so, such mashups have inspired me to consider and to explore the mashup aesthetic and procedure as pedagogical tools. Most mashups truck in irony and nostalgia: the pleasant swirl of memories and associations triggered by the juxtaposition of two well-worn but formerly unassociated songs. Implicit flaunting of copyright or the integrity of a musical work notwithstanding, for many listeners and producers, mashups are quite apolitical. They’re just plain fun. Even in seemingly straightforward cases, however, the meanings mashups might make frequently transcend the simply silly or comically consonant. When we hear more pathos in pop songstress Christina Aguilera’s vocals if she’s singing over the Strokes’ garage-rock power chords rather than bubblegum beats or when we fixate on the cartoonish qualities of rapper 50 Cent’s macho image as he’s rapping over Queen’s arena-rock kitsch, we discover correspondences, connotations, and critical readings of performances that we may not have given a second thought—or even a first listen. It is the mashup’s ability to produce such intensely audible and even pleasurable forms of critique, folding musical analysis into musical experience (not to mention embracing contemporary forms and technologies), that I wish to consider in this essay. After a brief discussion of mashup poetics, I will present a couple of examples of my own making.