John Oswald (composer)

John Oswald (born May 30, 1953 in Kitchener, Ontario) is a Canadian composer, saxophonist, media artist and dancer. He is best known for coining the term “plunderphonics”, the practice of making new music out of previously existing recordings. Early life Oswald was introduced to sampling from a young age having been gifted a reel-to-reel player from his parents at age 9. He then attended Simon Fraser University in the 1970s, becoming part of World Soundscape Project while on campus. It was there that Oswald became familiar with recorded sounds from different environments and applying them to new work created. Philosophy Oswald coined the term “plunderphonics” to describe his craft in a paper called “Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative” which he presented at the Wired Society Electro-Acoustic Conference in Toronto in 1985. Inspired by William S. Burroughs’ cut-up technique, Oswald had been devising plunderphonic-style compositions since the late 1960s. In an interview with Norman Igma following the release of the Plunderphonics EP in 1988, he described the concept as follows: A plunderphone is a recognizable sonic quote, using the actual sound of something