• NV deposited FYTA: Conceptual Songwriting on Humanities Commons 4 years, 11 months ago

    FYTA (meaning: “plants”) formed in 2012 as a musical duo, producing post-punk DIY digital albums that were provided free of charge on fyta.bandcamp.com. They have since been giving interviews in which they present themselves as mysterious personae (F78 and F89), being photographed with their faces covered in plants. On their website it is stated that their albums revolve around metaphors on the concepts of “nature” and the “natural”, aiming at sabotaging naturalised social relations, exposing the “self-importance of the avant-gardist” and mocking the white-male concept of the “precious genius-outsider artist”. Assuming that naturalisation is among the ideological strategies that render the beliefs of dominant social groups universal, what do FYTA wish to denaturalise on an artistic level? And why do it through singing? Given the fact that FYTA describe themselves as “conceptual songwriters”, teaching their songwriting methods in special workshops, I shall focus on “conceptual songwriting” as an artistic strategy of denaturalising specific musical “myths”, leading to the creation of a reflexive, performative sonic/verbal world.