Abstract
This essay discusses the emergence of the song and the album as significant modern genres. It also follows my experiences of writing and playing songs while seeking to combine critical theory, personal essay, song-writing, music production, and on-line publishing. I have been working toward a form of writing that theorist Walter Benjamin calls “montage practice.” My work is similar to hyper-text prose, and combines recorded original songs with prose writing, photography, and video clips to make an illustrated poetry/ music/ essay form that expands our traditional understanding of genre to include the song and its amplification through the internet. Advances in computer technology and internet accessibility make this possible. My ongoing project has grown in collaboration with a group of musicians, The Karma Refugees, who get together to write and record songs. It has developed into a website where my study of poetry, personal essay, critical theory, and cultural theory meet. This article will include recorded music performance and visual montage.
Recommended Citation
Opitz, Michael J.
(2017)
"The Song in the Tower of Academia,"
Headwaters:
Vol. 30, 27-43.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/headwaters/vol30/iss1/4