Affective Milieus and Singing Bodies in a
Social Musical App
M. Shuaib Mohamed Haneef
Abstract This chapter reveals how Smule, a social-music application, de-
territorializes music from the canons of professional territories, performers and
milieus. The app is a site of an assemblage of musical composition comprising over-
lapping events. The musical score, already composed and databased, reconnects with
new singing bodies (To Deleuze, bodies are de-stratified and comprise both human
and non-human machines). In this context of users appropriating Smule, they become
singing bodies through their interrelations and assemblages with music; the features
of the interface, the affective potentialities of the app and that of users; in addition
to singing, searching the database and pairing with already existing music bodies to
compose the duet song. These singing bodies are bodies without organs [BwO]) that
reconfigure popular music, besides unfolding the emergent potentiality of affective
work engendered by the becoming musical performances of amateur singers. The
becoming-music in Smule is performed through relations between the human and the
non-human, the material and the immaterial bodies. The assemblage of these bodies
enunciates and exhibits affective tendencies and attunements. Musical performances
enacted through singing along with the materialities of the interface of the app re-
ontologize music in Smule. Further, the musical bodies (an assemblage of singing
bodies and sonic materialities), recode milieus and events with new formations and
becomings of music. While the sonic patterns are repeated, singing as an event in
the different milieus of the app produces variations and differences.
Keywords Affect · Becoming · Smule · De-territorialization · Nomadic
movements · Singing bodies
M. Shuaib Mohamed Haneef (B )
Department of Electronic Media and Mass Communication,
Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India
e-mail: shuji22@gmail.com
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
G. Ravindran (ed.), Deleuzian and Guattarian Approaches to Contemporary
Communication Cultures in India,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2140-9_6
89