'Stayin' alive in da club'1: The illegality and hyperreality of mashups

Abstract

Mashups are a specific type of sample-based music where 'new' songs are created entirely from 'old' recordings. They contain no 'original' material and are the most overt examples of intertextuality in popular music. Vocal and instrumental parts are separated from musical backing through the process of 'unmixing'. Many of these extracts circulate freely (and often anonymously) on the Internet awaiting recombination with other samples. Following a brief history of mashup pioneers and an overview of its key players, I utilise a range of theoretical approaches to raise questions about originality and the role of the author as it pertains to entirely-sampled music. Permeating the essay are considerations of modernism and postmodernism. I suggest that the collaging, self-referential, ahistoric, postmodernistic tendencies of mashup creation are tempered by the outward-looking, inclusive, modernistic tendencies of DJ culture.