Listening Party: Imitation or Innovation?

Everything feels a little familiar these days. New songs sample older tracks, Disney is obsessed with live-action remakes of its old classics, and the 2020s is dominated by the resurgence of the 2000s. Is our culture running out of new ideas? And in a cultural landscape built on an endless stream of references, what does it even mean to be authentic?

In this workshop, we’ll unpack the slippery question of authenticity through music. Is jazz played by Japanese musicians an authentic expression or a derivative imitation? Is Mandopop simply a watered-down version of Western pop? When does sampling stop being appropriation and become its own musical language?

Art continues to be haunted by ideas of uniqueness and originality. We’ll be listening to music that complicates the boundaries of what is expected from a particular genre or place, tracing how art can move across political, cultural and social borders.