Chamber Music: Wu-Tang and America (in 36 Pieces)

by Will Ashon

Overview

“Each of these chambers contains wonders of history, destiny, and mythology. Chamber Music is hip hop as race and class politics, as music and as poetry on the move. Through Ashon’s vibrant textured prose we watch in awe as these young men seize on whatever the culture has to offer, sampling leftovers and legacies, making themselves into ferocious artists” —Margo Jefferson, award-winning author of Negroland

"Stylistically loaded, reckless, funny, naked, thorough, thoughtful, mysterious, devastating, unrelenting, and compassionate. One of the most rewarding pieces of hip hop criticism ever written."—Jeff Chang, author of We Gon' Be All Right: Notes on Race and Resegregation and Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

Will Ashon tells, in 36 interlinked "chambers", the story of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and how it changed the world. As unexpected and complex as the album itself, Chamber Music ranges from provocative essays to semi-comic skits, from deep scholarly analysis to satirical celebration, seeking to contextualize, reveal and honor this singular work of art. Chamber Music is an explosive and revelatory new way of writing about music and culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571350001
Publisher:	Faber and Faber
Publication date:	02/19/2019
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Will Ashon was born in Leicester in 1969. Having worked as a music journalist, he founded the record label Big Dada Recordings in 1996, which he ran for over fifteen years, signing acts like Roots Manuva, Wiley, Diplo, Kate Tempest, and Young Fathers and, in the process, winning the Mercury Music Prize twice. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

1st Chamber-The Picture 3

2nd Chamber-Don't Cry 7

3rd Chamber-Rules of Engagement 23

4th Chamber-Here and There 28

5th Chamber-Creative Reorganisation 35

6th Chamber-Parent Trap 43

7th Chamber-Impure Thoughts 44

8th Chamber-Throwing Away the Key 50

9th Chamber-Crack in the System 60

10th Chamber-Dealing 73

11th Chamber-Young Gods 78

12th Chamber-A Problem in Mathematics 88

13th Chamber-Crossing the Border 92

14th Chamber-Collective Insulation 97

15th Chamber-Secrets and Lies 103

16th Chamber-Walkin' 115

17th Chamber-Faking for Real 123

18th Chamber-Primary Colours 135

19th Chamber-Respecting Violence 142

20th Chamber-A Shaw Thing 150

21st Chamber-36 Synopses of Doom 161

22nd Chamber-The Sun Rises in the East 171

23rd Chamber-Sound Technique 189

24th Chamber-The Deuce 195

25th Chamber-Cash Rules 204

26th Chamber-In and Out 211

27th Chamber-Warriors Come Out to Play 216

28th Chamber-Torture 224

29th Chamber-Pass the Bone 233

30th Chamber-Thanatasia 242

31st Chamber-Jumping Free 252

32nd Chamber-The Last Battle 263

33rd Chamber-Whose Problem? 272

34th Chamber-Levels of Devils 283

35th Chamber-Masked Avenger 299

36th Chamber-Enihcam Emit 322

Sample 335

Acknowledgements 363

Index 365

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Will Ashon's dazzling study gets to the heart of hip hop, pop culture and the history of contemporary America. Essential”—Matt Thorne

Editorial Reviews

Ashon's book is a sequence of 36 linked essays/digressions exploring the economic, intellectual, metaphysical, cultural, political, emotional and musical context of Wu-Tang Clan's debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). It is a work of gung-ho breadth and surging critical electricity; I was happily reminded of Ian MacDonald's brilliant Beatles book, Revolution in the Head.

The New York Times Book Review - James Parker

12/24/2018

This thoughtful yet muddled cultural history takes a deep dive into the Staten Island hip-hop group Wu Tang Clan, who hit the music scene in 1993 with Enter the Wu-Tang. That album, Washington Post reporter Ashon (Strange Labyrinth) writes, brought New York’s “gritty, grimy hardcore style” back to the fore at a time when the sleeker West Coast sound of Dr. Dre was popular. Ashon admits his book takes “a largely non-linear, sample-heavy, magpie approach as its template,” and indeed he hops from broad historical sketches to discursive ruminations, including on police brutality in the 1980s and ’90s and the DEA’s Operation Pipeline (a police training program), that often have only tangential relationships to the music group. Ashon’s approach does yield some fruit, particularly when digging into Wu-Tang’s influence on such things as the quasimystical Five-Percenter movement and the Hong Kong wuxia (martial arts) movies. Ashon produces some meaningful background on individual Wu-Tang members, particularly Method Man (Clifford Smith took his name from meth) and the self-destruction of Ol’ Dirty Bastard (Russell Johnson “was strung up on crack” and died of an overdose in 2004). But too often his spirals of research—even into possibly germane topics like the history of early hip-hop—never connect back. It’s a fascinating book that too often gets tangled in its many narrative threads. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"A conceptually audacious critical study about the conceptual audacity of the Wu-Tang Clan—and well beyond.... Hip-hop fans and anyone interested in the deeper seams of American culture will be glad [he wrote it.]"—*****STARRED KIRKUS REVIEW

"There has never been a book quite like Will Ashon's Chamber Music.. his narrative is never less than fascinating and meticulously researched.. his descriptions of the group’s music are so charged and thrilling that they make relistening to their work seem a matter of urgency."—Guardian

From the Publisher

★ Winter 2018

Released to rave reviews in 1993, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) remains one of the most highly regarded hip-hop albums of all time. With a broad range of lyrical imagery, a rough sound, and minimalist sampling, it bears repeated listening and analysis. A unique work of this type deserves an unconventional roadmap, and Ashon (Strange Labyrinth) delivers the goods. This is not your conventional song-by-song analysis but a rich and deep collection of explorations—in 36 chapters—that can examine a piece of music in its minutest form, divert to a history of recorded saxophone "honkers and screechers," or discuss how the invention of the player piano shaped the way music royalties are currently paid. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Ashon's approach is marvelously subjective, and one of the beauties of this book is that it leads readers into reevaluating both music criticism and the approach to recordings in general. VERDICT Not just a fascinating take on an important piece of work, this is an eye-opening offering for fans of contemporary music.—Bill Baars, formerly of Lake Oswego P.L., OR

Library Journal

★ 2018-12-04

An illumination of hip-hop, race, religion, and America, through a close reading of an influential debut album.

On the surface, this book commemorates the 25th anniversary of "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)," but there is much beneath the surface, making for a conceptually audacious critical study about the conceptual audacity of the Wu-Tang Clan—and well beyond. Ashon (Strange Labyrinth: Outlaws, Poets, Mystics, Murderers and a Coward in London's Great Forest, 2017, etc.) investigates how avant-garde jazz musicians, whose styles were dismissed at the time as nonmusic or anti-music, led to howls from the hip-hop abyss to an even more powerful and popular artistry initially dismissed as nonmusic: no musical instruments, no conventional melodies, no singing. He also explores how that music and its culture has since swallowed up the culture at large as well as the affinity that radical black American artists have felt for Asia in general and kung fu movies in particular, identifying with the other as it battles cultural oppression. In perhaps the most audacious chapter—or "chamber," as it references the title of the Wu-Tang Clan's debut, which itself references the title of a kung fu movie—the author declares, "hip hop is a martial art. That is the key insight of the Wu-Tang Clan….It doesn't share certain practices with a martial art. It actually is a martial art….The legendary MC and thinker KRS-One describes hip hop as ‘a mental survival tool for the oppressed,' and once you begin to tunnel down into what that might mean, the parallels become clear." Ashon also devotes considerable space to religious esoterica, the pseudoscience of race, guns, and drugs, recording technology and economics, the Staten Island Indian tribes, and the cultural history of 42nd Street.

Near the end, the author addresses cultural appropriation, as well, acknowledging that "this book shouldn't exist"—not by a white author from an ocean's remove, but, "I wrote it anyway, even knowing I shouldn't." Hip-hop fans and anyone interested in the deeper seams of American culture will be glad he did.

Kirkus Reviews