Performing sound of the past: Remix in electronic dance music culture

Abstract

The term remix, defined as an activity of taking data from pre-existing materials to combine them into new forms according to personal taste, relates to various elements and areas of contemporary culture. Whichever model used, consideration of the remix depends on recognition of pre-existing cultural codes. Therefore, as a second layer, the remix relies on the authority of the original and it functions at the meta-level. The audience may see a trace of history with the pre-existing object and the meaning creates in the viewer(s), reader(s), listener(s) or, in the contemporary world of DJs and popular electronic dance music culture - in dancer(s). With the aim of specifying modes of creating particular ambients, this paper will consider and examine the song Why Don?t You? remixed by Marko Milicevic, a Serbian DJ also known as Gramophonedzie, and illuminate how material from the past can create a constructive (musical) dialogue.