Total what?

So I don't really understand Totalism. I don't really understand the term itself, how it differs from post-minimalism, and what that means for the compositional process.
Gann starts off by stating that the genre on whole is akin to post-minimalism, but in his precise bullets that discuss the background of totalism, it doesn't particularly strike me as MUSICAL aspects that differ from other pigeon-holed genres. The justification for Totalism and reasons Gann state are largely sociological and historical, such as the environment in which this generation of composers were growing up. Okay, I acknowledge that this is a massive part of the process of composition, but being the budding theorist that I am, where is my analysis? Okay so they use come poly-rhythms? Is that it? great thanks for being so thorough.

Perhaps these questions will be resolved, or at least discussed to my satisfaction during class discussion. Or I can only hope.

So in my confusion I tried to focus on one of the composers discussed to try to latch onto something I could recognize and acknowledge and learn about correctly. Mikel Rouse was my choice, after watching this clip of Dennis Cleveland online:



At first, my reaction was merely "what is this 90's pseudo pop crap?" And as soon could latch onto something more musical about it, rather than just talking about the composer's life and background, I knew there was something more there.

Then I found THIS VIDEO. And all was made clear. Thank you so much Mikel Rouse, for clearly and succinctly explaining your process, as well the rhythms, using examples from your composition (like the part about Soul Train from Dennis Cleveland)

WATCH:


I also enjoy his discussion of "structured pop music", not that he claims that his works are quite applicable to this term, but the evolution of more 'academic' pop music. I am wholly glad that Rouse is bringing the importance of intelligent popular music to the forefront of the mind through his compositions, as I am pretty passionate about understanding and analyzing popular music (I jokingly tell everyone I would love to write my dissertation on Michael Jackson...except I'm not actually kidding).


As a sidenote, the idea of performance art is always astounded me. I think a lot of people, including myself, find it pretty funny in several cases, and it might be because of artistic endeavors like this one:


Media site Gawker tells the tale of Alison Knowles making a giant salad as performance art. Just makes me pretty hungry. Actually, one of the more provoking questions I thought of while watching her performance at the Tate museum in London was, "why does she choose classical string quartets to accompany her salad performance?" If performance art is to encompass the entire artistic being in a work, was choosing Mozart or Beethoven chamber music a conscious decision?

I don't know. I'm going to go eat a salad now.