Revolution 99

Here's my English project.




Revolution 99
For my creative project, I chose the recent protests, known as Occupy Austin, which are going on at City Hall. I see the protests as the leftist answer to the Tea Party movement, a movement that will bring about long-deserved changes in government. The title of my project, Revolution 99, is both a reference to the Beatles song Revolution 9, from which I got a bit of inspiration for this project, and to the slogan “We are the 99 percent,” seen commonly throughout the protests, and referring to those who are not in the 1 percent of massively wealthy Americans.
The key to my creative project is the juxtaposition – by mixing the music in with the audio from the protests, I equate the two. All the music that I use was specifically chosen for the rebellious and, in some cases, revolutionary content. The project starts with a sample of a numbers station, which is on its own not considered music, but when put next to the other music can only be considered avant-garde music, similar to the Futurists of revolutionary Russia. Numbers stations are used by governments to transmit messages to spies – “delta foxtrot delta zwo eins” could have been a message from East Germany ordering agents to kill the president of some far-off country. However, just as the protesters reappropriated City Hall, a government site, as a site for protesting government, I reappropriate clandestine government orders as music. Other parts include samples from the Rite of Spring, noted for causing a riot upon its premiere; the Concerto Spirituale by Arthur Lourié, which, among other works, got its composer purged; and the song “Love Lies Limp” by Alternative TV, one of the bands that kicked off the punk rock movement. Just like these songs, the protests are kicking off a movement too, one that has become a “global movement of change, of people realizing that they are no longer in charge of their government,” as one woman whom I interviewed at the protests put it. Occupy Austin, along with the other Occupy movements, will certainly bring mass change and reform into the United States.
The diversity of music chosen and the relative fragmentation of the project is a reflection of what it was like to walk around the protests. Some people are actually serious about change. Some of those serious people want change in a libertarian manner, and others want it with government oversight. Some people are there because grassroots organization is chic to them, regardless of whether or not they actually believed in the movement. Some were there playing music for others - a benefit show was being organized, and Kaz was there a few hours after I went listening to a band. There were also LaRouche cultists. All of these people, packed into the green around City Hall, made for a bit of a chaotic experience, one of vastly different messages being broadcast. Regardless, though, they came together as a unified protest, just as this project brings different works together as a unified work.

In order of appearance, the music is as follows:

Dfd 21, The Conet Project
Concerto Spirituale, Lourié
Love Lies Limp, Alternative TV
Voiles, Debussy
Rite of Spring, Stravinsky
The protests
Piano Sonata no. 2, Mosolov
New - Stock, Hausen, and Walkman
Opus Clavicembalisticum, Sorabji
Nixon in China, Adams
Verklärte Nacht, Schoenberg
The People United Will Never Be Defeated, Rzewski
The Tides of Manaunaun, Cowell