grime going bourgeois

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simon silverdollar

Guest
there's obviously a lack of proper grime raves at the moment, and has been for at least a year. now, it seems that the only places that grime artists get to play is more middle class, studenty nights- stuff at 333, 93 ft east, the aborted vice-pub grime project- even FWD is pretty studenty and bourgeois (especially since me and friends have started going, ha!).

something that simon reynolds mentioned about drum n bass- how the massive is now largely students, and how that's changed the music- got me thinking: will the fact that the live audience for grime is now becoming much more middle class and studenty change the music, as producers, consciously or otherwise, change the music to get a bigger response on the bourgeois dancefloor?

i guess it really depends on how important the live context is to the production of the music- with grime not being 'dance music' per se, the changing demographic of the dancefloor might not matter too much.

anyway, something to think about. and something worrying for self-hating bourgeois persons like myself...
 
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captain easychord

Guest
ya i was noticing the same thing. what's the size of the "non-bourgois" grime audience at this point anyway?
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
well, pretty huge i think. i live next to a school and you often hear kids singing grime lyrics, and all the estates around me have grime coming out of loads of windows in summer time.
 

DJL

i'm joking
People need to stop worrying about what class or colour or weight or anything else they are and try and be happy with their lot. You find more wealthy people putting on the raves but thats how its generally always been if you look back at the promoters of Fantazia, Obsession etc. Today people are obsessed with wealth, class, colour and trying to apportion blame for any wrong in their lives on one of these easy to remember tags. Raves are about peace and love and unity however gay that sounds to some. Swear people need to start doing pills again. ;)
 
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captain easychord

Guest
ya that makes sense, so the ish is really that there WOULD be more raves but it's a herculean task to put one on in london right?
 

DJL

i'm joking
captain easychord said:
ya that makes sense, so the ish is really that there WOULD be more raves but it's a herculean task to put one on in london right?

I'm not sure. Kano got cancelled but to be honest I get the feeling its almost a publicity stunt or at least it will benefit Kano and his record company as though it were one so I'm sure they're not totally unhappy. You can put on nights anywhere if you try hard enough.
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
the fact that grime barely had any clubs (since it's always been banned in Westminster ie the west end - Sidewider was the one) and had to retreat to pirate radio is one of the reasons why it was free to experiment and expand.

the fact that its now getting access to Shoreditch clubs means maybe these artists can finally earn some more money from performing.

and as for FWD being middleclass, as far as i remember from last time simon, you spent large parts of the evening with your eyes on stalks going 'look there's gift! there's bossman! there's essentials! there's ears! there's skepta! there's danny weed!'. FWD's always been a mix of people, not just one group - that's what made it interesting over the years.

but just because grime's in clubs that is visible to us it would be lazy and incorrect to say grime's grass roots following is decreasing.
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
Blackdown said:
the fact that grime barely had any clubs (since it's always been banned in Westminster ie the west end - Sidewider was the one) and had to retreat to pirate radio is one of the reasons why it was free to experiment and expand.

the fact that its now getting access to Shoreditch clubs means maybe these artists can finally earn some more money from performing.

and as for FWD being middleclass, as far as i remember from last time simon, you spent large parts of the evening with your eyes on stalks going 'look there's gift! there's bossman! there's essentials! there's ears! there's skepta! there's danny weed!'. FWD's always been a mix of people, not just one group - that's what made it interesting over the years.

but just because grime's in clubs that is visible to us it would be lazy and incorrect to say grime's grass roots following is decreasing.

well, i would never say that grime's grass roots following is decreasing. my thought was rather that, if grime artists can no longer play live to this grass roots following as much as they might have in the past, how might this change the music?

it might not change the music at all, of course.

and yeah FWD is a good mix of people, and yeah i am always thrilled to feel like yr kind of seeing the 'hub' of the scene, cuz i'm a fan-boy like that :), but i was really surprised by how studenty it was- like, when we got there, we were sat next to this big group of lads, who it transprired went to Oxford and it all started to seem weirdly like an Oxford drum n bass night. i'm not saying that's a bad thing- they were lovely lads, and Forward was really fun...
 

bun-u

Trumpet Police
Well I suppose if we’re talking about putting on grime in bourgeoisie venues, I’m as guilty as anyone – getting Ruff Sqwad to perform in an art gallery next Friday !

The thing is I don’t think I would’ve organised this if we had a burgeoning live circuit for the scene. There does seem to be this blacklisting of garage nights going on…even clubs like Purple E3 only survive because they have a “no mcs” policy, only playing old skool garage. One of the ways around this is to prove the target audience is somehow different – i.e. putting on the nights in studenty/bourgeoisie venues.

Another point here is that there seems to be two main grime audiences – the main one being the urban youth – lets call them the “road crew” and the second being a smaller group - the older ravers/blogs (peops who have followed this ‘ardcore continuum through to its current point) – lets call them the “silver ravers”. The silver ravers’ role has so far been limited to championing the scene through media/blogs etc….maybe conscientiously avoiding any further meddling in it for fear of unduly tamper/gentrify it. This has been against the backdrop of the road crew struggling to lay down the infrastructure to build a lasting scene – hitting barriers to putting on raves, setting up viable record labels, using new media. I’ve recently come around to the idea that the scene would prosper more can be overcome if there was more cross-fertilisation between the two groups – hence me putting on the night.

As far as the topic is concerned – whether the new audience will change the music? Well I’m sure quite a few of the crossover tracks are already trying to search out studenty Mike Skinner fans…but I don’t see that formula working just yet. I can see the more ‘conscious’ types like Plan B and ukhiphop crossover acts working that particular crowd.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
captain easychord said:
what's the size of the "non-bourgois" grime audience at this point anyway?

i dunno but if it helps, grime DVDs sell about 3000-4000 copies far as im aware...
 

dogger

Sweet Virginia
haha! yeh, that was me. but mate, glasshouses?

and anyway if grime is going to be anything other than a dead end scene it has to appeal to a wider audience than its 'grassroots' base. and that doesn't necessarily involve a loss of 'authenticity': it's possible to distinguish between the authenticity of the producer and the consumer, with the former being of greater importance. if i were to start producing grime tracks, then, yes, i might be dilluting the scene's authenticty, but by buying the music and going to live events -- that's supporting it, surely?
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
well, since the audience for underground hip hop became considerably more white and middle class, the music has become mostly non-threatening, lightweight, stuck in the early 90s, puritanical, and really really boring. i would venture the artists being mindful of the audience theyre playing to has had quite a lot to do with this. then again, the audience for mainstream hip-hop is mostly white also so thats had an impact too, albeit in quite a different way.
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
just to clarify, i'm not saying that grime people shouldn't play the more trendy middle class venues, or that people shouldn't organise grime nights in such venues.

my question doesn't take any stand over whether grime people playing to middle class audiences is a good or a bad thing (as blackdown notes, it could be a very good thing as it helps grime artists start to actually earn some money for all their work).

rather, my question was just whether the change in the demographic of grime dancefloors would change the music.

a question which is probably unanswerable at this stage!
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
dogger said:
haha! yeh, that was me. but mate, glasshouses?

it was you in forward? i said up-thread that you were 'lovely', so obviosuly no criticism at all was meant...

so, no stones were thrown, so don't worry about the glasshouses...

and i fully own up to being very middle class.
 

DJL

i'm joking
simon silverdollar said:
rather, my question was just whether the change in the demographic of grime dancefloors would change the music.

It shouldn't do imo. Good music is class-less. Good musicians and producers understand everyone feels emotion and at root have similar hopes, problems and ideas. The minute someone makes music which is only for certain groups they have taken the first step down a dead end.
 

dogger

Sweet Virginia
yeah and it would be nice - if perhaps a little naive - to think that neither one demographic had neccessarily to exclude the other. certainly that was the case at fwd that night.

blackdown's piece about integration (or the lack of it) - http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.com/ - describes a pressing problem, and anything that helps to dissolve these barriers can only be a good thing.

but valid and interesting point about the influence on the music itself and, yes, no way of telling just yet.

re: underground hiphop -- i wouldn't describe, say, cann ox's 'the cold vein' as puritanical, or boring, or lightweight, or stuck in the early 90's....
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
the cold vein is such a good record.

the rest of def jux's stuff i'm not really into, but the 'cold vein' just KILLS.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
def jux is their own little entity though (i love can ox and el-p), actually def jux and guys like anticon are probably the leading acts in underground hip hop these days, its gonna be interesting to see if white rappers will actually become more dominant in the underground and gradually supplant the black rappers...
 

bun-u

Trumpet Police
simon silverdollar said:
just to clarify, i'm not saying that grime people shouldn't play the more trendy middle class venues, or that people shouldn't organise grime nights in such venues.

my question doesn't take any stand over whether grime people playing to middle class audiences is a good or a bad thing (as blackdown notes, it could be a very good thing as it helps grime artists start to actually earn some money for all their work).

rather, my question was just whether the change in the demographic of grime dancefloors would change the music.

a question which is probably unanswerable at this stage!

I know this SD, but I picked up a subtext of your opening post, which was also kind of questioning of the (grime in middle class venues)phenomenon
 
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