Musical Dishonesty: Fakes, Forgeries, Counterfeits, Hoaxes, Deceptions, Illusions, and Artifice

Dishonesty is everywhere. Is anything still honest? To answer we examine the myriad types of musical dishonesty, some harmless and fanciful, others deliberate and pernicious: artfully misleading deceptive cadences and fake endings; evident frauds (the fictional band Spinal Tap) and purposely obscured ones (the lip-syncing of Milli Vanilli); psychoacoustic illusions (infinitely ascending Shepard tones); biographical deceptions of "dangerous" rappers and metal bands; fake Mozart manuscripts; ghost composers and AI generated music; the question of sampling; self-mythologized artists from KISS to P-Funk; and so on. Students will also explore examples beyond music, such as current political events and contemporary conspiracy theories.