I believe this is more than excellent art. This is the beginning of a new artistic movement. Kutiman mixes smallish fragments of YouTube videos into new and fascinating music. These are fragments of normal people like you and me, mind you. Some freak with a camera singing into YouTube. Proud parents film their offspring at the instruments. At the year’s end gig of the music school people play their instruments and end up captured on YouTube by some cell phone. And Kutiman mixes it all into convincing art.
We do not need to hide from the Stars. Each of us can only contribute a very small part, because we are just not as professional as the stars. But together, we can well keep up. And there is only one Kutiman. If there were many, lots of Kutimen, there would be no more stars. Because all of us together, we are the culture. The stars are lighthouses. Without us their performance would not exist. A cave man can be no electric guitarist. We are the culture.
Still utopia , but may soon become reality: Many musicians – Joe and Jane music teachers and their average students – for right this pupose load individual instrumental and vocal parts up to YouTube (or other platforms) in good quality – currently much of the material used by Kutiman has abysmal sound quality. An army of Kutimen comb through this huge pile for pearls and mix new music from it.
In a steady stream of average starlet Kutimen, -singers, and -instrumentalists slosh through the social networks. The commercialization of our musical culture is embanked by this huge flood of excellent music. Our culture itself snatches the sovereignty of interpreting itself from commerce.
Oh and, yes, of course Kutiman is “degenerate art”. Each song is such a collection of copyright infringements: it would be quite easy to disappear it.