Cyrus Bozorgmehr

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by Cyrus Bozorgmehr has a lot to like and a little that can, for some, be off-putting. On the whole it is interesting and an insider's look at what happened in the making and selling of the infamous sole copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album.

I'll mention what is likely the most significant negative for some: the tone of the writing. I wasn't particularly enamored with the storytelling voice but at the same time Bozorgmehr was a part of the process and his involvement makes this more of a memoir-based account than what one might expect from either a music critic or art historian writing about the process and the result. So I can overlook his use, correctly, of "we" since he was indeed part of the we, even if not a large part. I can overlook his own answers to many of the questions raised by this since he was thinking about answers long before there was even a thought about a book. In other words, he has an emotional as well as an intellectual investment in the project and the irritating aspects of his narrative are, I think, mostly attributable this. Not some need to show what he knows or how smart he is. Thinking that about a writer often says more about the reader's insecurities than it does about the writer's alleged motivations. But anyway...

The idea of making a record, in this case a hip hop record, and treating it in the same manner the art world treats other tangible works of art is a perplexing idea. On one hand it makes perfect sense, music is art. Music is, by most accounts, meant to be shared, which makes this experiment far more nuanced than it first seems. There can be one original Mona Lisa, which is valuable, and many copies all along the reproduction spectrum with both quality and value also all along a spectrum. But the physical album of music is a carrier, the art is the music embedded in that carrier. So should a singular buyer be prevented from offering widespread distribution of the music while maintaining possession of the carrier, the album? The album would, as the only copy, still be valuable but the art would have been shared. With modern technology the quality of what is shared is on par with the album so there is less of a quality drop-off than with paintings and such, not to mention the lack of texture and depth of two dimensional copies of paintings.

All of that is to say that they never intended this to be a solution to the problem of valuing contemporary music but a statement about the fact that music is an art form which is currently being horribly under-valued. Treating it as one would a painting or sculpture is intended to start a discussion, not somehow be a solution. To think anyone involved with this project thought this was a "solution" is reading far too simplistically.

To compound the confusion one of the poster boys for entitlement, Martin Shkreli, is the buyer. If ever there was an ideal person to show both the flaws and the inequities in the art world it was him. Art can and should, I think, speak to everyone. Yet art is still largely reserved for those with money, not class, just money.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in music, art and the business behind both will find far more to like than dislike here. This is not about trying to legitimize hip hop and place it alongside other forms of music as equally artistic, not in the big picture. Hip hop is already there and those who listen to music know it, whether they like the music or not. This book is about treating an art form that is compact and abundant as a valued art form and not something to pirate.

Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads' First Reads.… (más)