On Nov 24, 2007 2:43 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What you mean? > > I do know that it's taken a lot less seriously here than it seems to be > elsewhere. Linked to death of disco? I don't know why, and I don't plan > on fixing it, but it is kind of a drag sometimes.
well at least for me, i think a lot of importance lies in giving current dance music a historical perspective. in the UK and europe the music has been in the forefront for so long, and everything was connected: people watched italo and disco turn into house and techno and then mesh with UK acid, new beat, etc to become more recent offshoots like hardcore, jungle, 2-step, trance, etc etc. even if there are alot of people listening who don't know this stuff, even the pop charts will show this movement if you look through them. a lot of the same people who ran things in the early house and techno scenes continue on to this day in their more recent subgenres. in the US, there was a huge discontinuity between the early dance scenes of house and techno and the rave scene. the people who were the originators got pushed to the side by the "Rave" people who in many cases were not the same as the people originally doing house and techno music. this happened due to hype, drugs, whatever other nonsense was taking precedence over the music. and now that rave has finally died here we still deal with it in the way that dance music is perceived: people associate all dance music with the corny stuff that came with raving. even the people who don't still have the mentality of the trendiness associated with the days of raving in the way they look at dance music. they want house or techno to be something that they never were, and they want it to be done in a way that already failed miserably when the rave scene died. i'm not sure what exactly can change this. one of my ideas is to more closely align dance music with the world of underground hiphop (another underground music here in the US but one that is taken more seriously) by highlighting the similarities in roots, production techniques, and other aspects of the music. i feel like the music of J Dilla will be a big uniting force here, as him and some of his cohorts like Waajeed are pretty darn "techno" anyway. another obvious move is for people to quit bandwagon jumping like crazy. this has to do with the novelty factor which seems to take over the techno and house scenes here and when those burn out, it reinforces the idea that dance music is disposable. this is where the historical perspective and big picture thinking are necessary, you have to remind people that it is okay to like old music and new music at the same time. you dont have to worry about keeping up with the joneses. and of course, i also personally blame music magazines in the US for this view of things. looking through recent XLR8R (fashion shoots? hahaha. that's not even really the worst of it, either.) and URB (perez hilton on the cover?!?!?! and that sh*t is edited by a former 313er. embarassing.) shows you exactly why people perceive dance music the way they do. its like we have a bunch of mixmags but no jockey sluts or anything better to balance it out. everything is weighted towards trendy crap that burns out seemingly every couple of months. tom
