So, just to put it out there... a lack of seriousness, or any kind of
ethos at all, is for me one of the reasons that a lot of recent
productions are so shallow and forgettable. I feel that lots of tracks
are made for the wrong motives, and it is pretty obvious in the end
results. You have a lot of supposed artists who have nothing to
communicate, they are just doing it to be popular and try to make
money. I think this is a distinct difference from what you see in good
dance music, starting with disco.
If you look at really good old disco, for example, for me even the
party tracks have some substance to them, because coming out of
Stonewall and the civil rights struggle, dancing and partying were in
a way serious business. People were becoming liberated and in the loft
party or disco creating an alternative, more inclusive society. People
were also dancing intensely in a way that was liberating their
personal energies and allowing them to alter their consciousness, as
people also do in West African tribes or in Voodoo rituals. So getting
the groove right that would get people dancing all night was really a
serious thing, even when the tracks didn't have an obviously serious
message. Now of course, I'm talking about the real records not the
cheap disco knock off records that were made when the big record
companies tried to get a piece of the disco pie for themselves.
Then, with house music you have the classic, "in the beginning there
was Jack speech," which I will always love, because it perfectly
balances the humorous ("Jack is the one who gives you the key to the
Wiggly Worm"), with a really important and quite serious idea--"Jack
is the one that can bring nations and nations of all Jackers together
under one house. You may be black, you may be white; you may be Jew or
Gentile. It don't make a difference in OUR House."
On the other hand, with today's house, the music sometimes degenerates
into nothing more than a consumerist soundtrack for snobby rich kids.
I also see more and more that people hardly seem to care about
dancing, they just drink and talk all night long (though I can be
guilty too, this body can't jack like it once did). As far as I'm
concerned, when you lose the idea of inclusiveness, and the idea of a
liberation from the prevailing ultra-materialistic and still
oppressive mainstream culture, the things that made partying something
more than just shallow hedonism disappear, and the music made for
consumption under these circumstances often has little value and zero
substance... Especially when people are not liberating their bodies
via dancing but just have the beats going as passive muzak!!!
So to conclude, I'd like to see a bit more seriousness in dance music,
which isn't to say that we can't laugh at the same time.
~David
On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 7:42 AM, kent williams <chaircrus...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Didn't we chew over this weeks ago when the Guardian article was published?
>
> Rob, UR are serious. They have a coherent artistic and political
> ideology, and they live in a city where sh*t is very serious. They
> also make really transcendently good dance music, and you don't have
> to follow their politics to enjoy it.
>
> David Guetta's ideology doesn't get much past cocaine and blow jobs
> from underage girls. He's a modern day Liberace, except that he can't
> even play a musical instrument.
>
