Transform and Transcend: Synthesis as a Transdisciplinary Approach to Thinking and Learning

Abstract

In 2003, a DJ named Brian Burton, also known as Danger Mouse, produced an album that blended music from the Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album—it was appropriately titled the Grey Album. By the DJ’s own admission, the project was intended as an underground hip-hop experiment, primarily for local club use. However, word of the compilation spread quickly via the Internet, as did downloads of the music. It became a phenomenon unto itself. This, in turn, spurred legal backlash from EMI for the unauthorized remixing of Beatles samples. At the time, many national news outlets reporting on this incident made reference to mixing (Danger Mouse’s ‘Grey Album’ spurs dispute, 2004), remixing (Pareles, 2004), and melding (DJ Mixes Beatles, Jay-Z into “Grey,” 2004), while others used a more colloquial term long known in the music world. Danger Mouse had created the quintessential mash-up. And the term began its journey toward the mainstream.