Viral videos are a dime a dozen. From the dog on a skateboard to the guy dropping his new iPhone 6, most involve nothing more than a video-recording phone in the right place at the right time.
But every so often, a viral video bubbles up that's the product of genuine effort. These actual feats of artistry can make an impression that goes beyond a fleeting chuckle or pleasing bout of distraction from work.
For me, the pinnacle of this sort of video is a clip from 2009 called ' Mother of All Funk Chords.' Watch it below.
I'm not the only one who was blown away by this remarkable collage - part of a collection of videos titled Thru-You, each of which stitched together multiple clips of home-brew YouTuber musicians' how-tos and similar material into a magnificent original song.
The proof isn't in the view-count of that creation, which is well over a million. The proof is that when its creator finally announced a Thru-You sequel, five years after the original, the Internet ate it up - with more than a million views in its first couple of days online.
That creator calls himself Kutiman, and clearly lots of us are thrilled to have him back. ' Give It Up,' his new musical YouTube mashup - featuring about two dozen video performers, from a child piano player to a guy busting out a hot guitar solo from some sort of home music room, all of them found via YouTube searches - is a preview of a new six-video batch of Kutiman creations titled Thru You Too, which will go live in full on Oct. 1.
There's something to these videos that goes beyond the viral norm - a kind of digital craftsmanship. And maybe that's why these videos seem to have attracted a devoted following.
So who exactly is the person behind the name 'Kutiman'?
Digital crate-diggingAs Israeli musician Ophir Kutiel tells it, the story begins with a simple journey into the vast realm of YouTube how-to videos. Impressed by one drumming clip in particular, and obsessively opening tab after tab on his browser, he stumbled into the realization that simultaneous clips sounded good together.
'I'm a big fan of YouTube,' he told me. 'And I learn so much from it. Not just music but, I don't know, how to cook lasagna, or fix my car.'
Still, building a new piece of music out of dozens of musical clips means many hours of wading through the backwaters of YouTube - which, to most of us, sounds nightmarish.
'I love it,' Kutiel countered. 'I love it. I can't even describe what's going on when I do it. It's night after night after night of just ... searching for the right person, the right instrument. And you know, it's YouTube, so you start out searching for a guitar video and you end up in the morning watching cats - stupid stuff. Trains. I remember finding myself watching train videos.'
This reminded me of remix DJ/producers who talk about 'crate-digging' - patiently flipping through massive troves of forgotten LPs looking for gems.
'Yes, I guess it's exactly like that,' Kutiel said. 'I forget about everything else in the world. A lot of times, I start with something I'm looking for and end up with something completely different. It's exploring.'
Kutiel said it took him an obsessive two months to put together Thru-You, released under the name Kutiman - his first collection of songs built from musical YouTube clips that included 'Mother of All Funk Chords.'
He says he was startled by the response. Time magazine put the video on a list of 'best inventions' of 2009; copyright-rethinking superstar Lawrence Lessig praised the work.
Apart from the popularity, the clips raised questions from some about the intellectual property implications. Kutiman's YouTube videos include long lists of linked source material (though sometimes videos he has captured have since disappeared from YouTube). I remember thinking that I'd love to encounter 'Mother of All Funk Chords' on the radio, but what a massive legal hassle it would be to make that plausible.
Eventually it dawned on me that I was using outdated standards. YouTube has become a popular destination for music listening. Hearing it on the radio? How much does that really matter?
'You just need to look for it' Kutiel told me he considers these YouTube projects a hobby. He's not trying to sell anything; there are no ads on the videos or their dedicated sites.
One of Kutiel's PR folks told me that his management team backs his remix projects 'for publicity purposes, as they believe it could help raise awareness about Kuti's talent, and in hopes that the musicians involved will benefit as well (via label interest, increased attention, etc). Everyone working on the project is doing so pro bono or via a very friendly rate.'
But then there is the other Kutiman - as a working musician, Kutiel has released one original album of slick, groovy funk ( Kutiman, available on Bandcamp, scored an 8.2 out of 10 rating from the notoriously picky music reviews site Pitchfork) and told me he has more ready for release 'on a hard drive.' He and his live band have maintained a solid working schedule: Here's a performance from earlier this year.
Along the way there have been live shows and other projects drawing directly on the Thru-You phenomenon. In this video, Kutiman mashed up the members of Maroon 5, all noodling separately. And in 2010, he created a mashup of live performers collaborating with video clips for a YouTube event at the Guggenheim:
Some observers reacted to the original Thru-You videos with commentary about intellectual property rights, but Kutiel told me that subject was never on his mind. The long gap between that project and Thru You Too is instead attributable to more workaday schedule issues and the usual challenges of creativity.
'It took me a few years to get back to the point where ... I'm doing it freely,' as he put it. 'From an honest place where I'm not trying to bring the next thing, and just do it for fun.'
This time around, he guesses it took up to four months - with breaks - to assemble Thru You Too, but the same spirit animates this sequel. Another issue that made the process a little slower: He's moved from Tel Aviv to a 'tiny village in the desert,' where slow Internet access makes every download decision a bit more of a commitment.
'When I'm cruising on YouTube,' he told me, 'I see so much talent, and beautiful things, that people don't pay attention to.' That seems particularly true these days: 'Everybody wants to get excited in one second, see what's blowing up and then move on to the next thing.'
So what do the makers of his source material think? Kutiel says he rarely hears from them directly. But as it happens, he did see a video from the singer whose a cappella video forms the vocal of his recent 'Give It Up' clip. In a rather touching video, KarMaRedd thanks Kutiman and all those who have sought out her YouTube channel lately.
It's a sincere and lovely moment that restores one's faith in the idea that the Internet can be a source of creative connection, rather than an endless loop of ugly trolling, shallow ideas, and endlessly recycled hype about dogs on skateboards.
To me, the magic of Kutiman's work is that it converts stuff that most of us dismiss as marginal - a bunch of amateur musicians on YouTube with hardly any views - into audio-visual objects of genuine beauty, pleasure, and value. I would say he's making something out of nothing.
But I don't think Kutiel would go along with that, exactly. He calls the Thru-You videos his contribution to 'music culture and YouTube culture.' He talks about the culture of sharing and mixing and remixing, and that's fine, but it's not what I think is most striking about his work. It's hard enough to fashion something truly original out of popular source material. But it's amazing that Kutiel can make such impressive work out of obscure YouTube clips that you or I would probably never even bother to watch.
'It makes me think about how much talent is out there,' he told me. 'You just need to look for it.'
Write to me at rwalkeryn@yahoo.com or find me on Twitter, @notrobwalker. RSS lover? Paste this URL into your reader of choice: http://ift.tt/1frHMT0.
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