Opposite People
World Music Dance Band 2010
Opposite People, the Traffic Jam, the Hanging Chads
This band shapeshifts names, members, and genres
Specialists in playing outdoor and community gigs
Wake Up the Earth Festival, Jamaica Pond Lantern Parade, Spontaneous Celebrations Winter Carnival, Prospect Hill Block Party, Hyde Park Farmer’s Market, Egleston Square Main Streets…
Shrine to the Funky Drummer
Experimental Documentary Video 2010
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Volume 16: Low-Tech. ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art
This project was initially developed during my residency as Artist In Research at the Berwick Research Institute.
It is being published by ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art in Volume 16: Low-Tech.
Audio commentary by Wayne Marshall of wayneandwax.com and presently Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT.
Shrine to the Funky Drummer is an experimental video documentary that seeks to portray a specific instance of media sampling as an archetypal cultural moment and a lens through which to examine a multifaceted story of creative appropriation. The ‘Funky Drummer’ is a five-second excerpt from a James Brown song that has been used as the foundation of hundreds of other musical compositions and is one of popular music’s most famous samples. For this project I gathered and created artifacts and ‘holy relics’ that explore the early history of Hip Hop and the creative acts of sampling and remixing. The video examines debates about copyright and fair use in relation to Afro-Diasporic musical notions of “versioning,” the fetishistic culture of record-digging, and postmodern theoretical questions about authorship in the age of digital (re)production.
Traffic Jam ’09
Concert Series 2009
Berwick Artist In Research
Residency 2009
I’ve been chosen as an Artist In Research at the Berwick Research Institute for this spring.
Here’s what the press release says:
Joshua Pablo Rosenstock is a multimedia artist, musician, and educator based in Boston. His work explores the process of remixing via the creation of new instruments, interactive interfaces, and multimedia installations. With the Berwick, Rosenstock will be working on ‘Shrine to the Funky Drummer’, a multimedia installation that will seek to portray a specific instance of media sampling as an archetypal cultural moment and a lens through which to examine a multifaceted story of creative appropriation. The ‘Funky Drummer’ is a five-second excerpt from a James Brown song that has been used as the foundation of hundreds of other musical compositions and is one of popular music’s most famous samples.
During his project, he’ll be gathering, creating, and presenting artifacts and ‘holy relics’ that explore the early history of Hip Hop and the creative acts of sampling and remixing. Rosenstock will be investigating debates about copyright and fair use in relation to Afro-Diasporic musical notions of ‘versioning,’ the fetishistic culture of record-digging, and postmodern theoretical questions about authorship in the age of digital (re)production.
Update: My Berwick project blog can be found here if you’d like to follow along.
Traffic Jam
Funky Street Band 2008
It’s been wonderful to be in a funky band again and get the people up and dancing. Everyone in the group is having lots of fun so we’ll be continuing with the project in the fall.
32 Miniature Themes
Solo Musical Compositions 2008
A collection of musical compositions created over the last year or so under my solo moniker Avocado Kid.
Each song can be thought of as a soundtrack to a distinct imaginary world. As most of them are quite brief, I conceive of them as miniature themes, conjuring the essential impression of a scene and story.
The instruments I play on these tracks include electric and upright bass, drum kit, guitars, electric piano and organ, violin, bamboo saxophone, trombone, synthesizers, drum machines, african and latin percussion, melodica, voice.
Funk Improvisation For One Performer and Archival Dancers
Music/Video Performance 2002
Programmed in Max/MSP/Jitter, this piece is conceived as a dialogue between myself as musical performer and the dancing figures contained in the video material. The visual qualities of the video playback are controlled by the sounds generated by my bass, and my playing is in turn influenced by the randomly-generated combinations of video clips, video filters, and audio loops.
Groovement
Funk/Soul-Jazz Band 2002
Shane Baird/Will Dowling – saxophones
John Foord – drums
Aaron Julin – rhodes, organ, clavinet, moog
Chris Howard – percussion
Kevin O’Dea – guitar, talkbox
Josh Rosenstock – fender bass





























