Ringing Endorsements

The Age

Saturday September 16, 2006

SUZY FREEMAN-GREENE

Suzy Freeman-Greene looks for a ring of authenticity in a digitally dull world of Nokia tunes.

I WAS a little nervous about talking to The Ringtone Society. How do you tell a Dutch art collective, whose entire mission is to free the world from "digitally dull, copycat mobile phone ringtones", that your own phone is set to the Nokia tune?

Ringtones rule but I've been in denial. There are phone tunes made from footy club songs, movie soundtracks, filleted symphonies, national anthems. On the Billboard ringtone charts, the Super Mario Brothers theme is at number one; Henry Mancini's Pink Panther theme is in sixth place. Two Lynyrd Skynyrd songs also lurk there amid all the fresh hip-hop and sexual energy.

Last year a ringtone called Crazy Frog topped the British and Australian music charts, confirming the ringtone as a new musical genre. It could be a 30-second swoon; a brief, thrilling register of condensed emotion. But most are derivative snippets of the familiar. The Ringtone Society wants to change this by inviting composers to create original works, specifically as ringtones. It sees the ringtone as a new artistic form, an heir to the fugue perhaps. "The variety of ringtones is infinite", proclaims its manifesto.

The society was formed last year. It began as a rebellious statement, half a gimmick. Now its website is filled with hip-hop, jazz, country, ska, funk-soul, pop-rock, electronic, heavy-metal and spoken word offerings. There are ringtones called "Pick up the phone, bitches", "A Kraftwerk Orange", "Please Stop Calling Me" and "Bad News Found You". There are political ringtones ("My Fellow Americans") and non-verbal layerings of the voice.

On the phone from Holland, the society's technical director Maike Fleuren sounds slightly awed by the whole ringtone thing. She describes with amazement her trips to mobile phone shops where she watches kids "pimping their phones" with the latest decorative accessories. When I tell her I've had trouble hearing the tunes on the site she suggests I grab any kid aged from eight to 12 and ask for help.

Was there an especially annoying ringtone that prompted the society's formation? A tinny rendition, perhaps, of Sweet Child O'Mine or one more Zorba the Greek that sounds like it was played on a toy xylophone?

She names the Nokia tune (oops) and Crazy Frog as the chief culprits but also she's concerned about the wider phenomenon of people selling synthesised, imperfect versions of popular songs without paying royalties to the artists who created them.

The web is full of sites selling ringtones. Crazy Frog reportedly earned almost $35 million in sales. With new phones, people can download MP3s themselves, which should eliminate the worst of the synthesised ringtone merchants. The society, however, wants to transform the public space of the ringtone in the same way graffiti has colonised walls.

It talks of "audio tags" and bringing art to a new audience. Its manifesto ("Make Ringtones, Not War! Free the Ringtone!") speaks of nothing less than "the renovation of music through the art of ringtonism". There's a politics of the ringtone that's about local versus global sounds; creativity versus mass commerce.

One of the ringtones in the society's online library is sung in a dialect particular to the Dutch town of Tilburg. Fleuren's favorite track, by singer Jamie Lidell, is a kind of layered, human beat-boxing recorded backstage at a concert. The society is coming to the Melbourne International Arts Festival where it will record local ringtones at a live concert. Special screens will allow people to make their own ringtones from a musical sample bank.

I ask Fleuren about the ringtone on her own phone. I'm imagining something deeply cutting-edge, perhaps a grab of electronica, so I'm amazed when she says she's "the one with the really annoying Nokia tune".

"I have to admit I'm the last of the crappy phone holders within the organisation," she confesses. "Basically I just want a phone to make calls and send text messages."

Exactly, Maike, I know how you feel. I tell her my own dirty secret and we agree there are still quite a few of us polluting the air with that high-pitched Nokia drone. I'm tempted to venture it's a stance of sorts, but in my case I know its just apathy.

She assures me she's looking for a new phone right now. "I'm going to get one before I come to Australia".

The Ringtone Society is inviting Australian compositions on its website, ringtonesociety.com, until October 12. Members will appear at the ACMI screen pit during the festival from October 13.

© 2006 The Age

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