In response to the
worried
commentary of Spencer Ackerman, who thinks we are out to take over the
culture, comes the following post from my esteemed
CNAS colleague Christine Parthemore,
chief of the institution's shadowy but powerful Department of Punk.
Commentators and experts from around the
country have called for the extermination of Auto-Tune, as if the creative path
of popular music is so easy to deter, its favored technologies so simple to
contain. One Beltway journalist and blogger now contends
that our organization, the Center for a New
American Security, should put our brainpower to the critical national
challenge of sculpting just such a plan, as if Auto-Tune is the new Soviet
Union, and as if we have found ourselves in a cultural Cold War.
This suggestion is based on a
misunderstanding of the pragmatic, reasoned approach CNAS brings to all of its
work. While we do not take institutional positions, I can affirm after a
healthy debate that many of my colleagues agree that while the over-use of
Auto-Tune should be walked back to a status of minimal but strategic,
calculated use, a sweeping call for its death represents just the kind of
un-nuanced policy which we attempt in all our work to counterbalance. Do we call for the mass destruction of
guitars because of Daughtry?
No, we don't. Certainly Jamie
Foxx et al.'s performance at this week's BET Awards argues for a measured
approach to this issue."
Auto-Tune doesn't kill music, people kill music.
Marcelo Vejar G./Flickr
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