Cultural Cowardice

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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
thinking about dubstep in it's original, pre-wobble incarnation. it's outsiders trying to make music of another culture; people like us trying to make nuum music. it's centred around a cultural signifier, this self-aware fetishisation of bass (consciously trying to link it to the sound system tradition). it's inherently cowardice (if we think that's about mapping terrains) because it's whole raison d'etre is to signify terrain that's already been mapped so as construct a connection to the music of the past.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
sadmanbarty said:
maybe a large-part of studentification is rockification. rhtmic dumbing down
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mcing wise this applies to stormzy, skepta, jme.


also a weird enunciation with them lot, sounds a bit like when you're english and you go abroad so speak slowly and enunciate every syllable hoping they'll understand you.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
good. i'm glad that's cleared up. i cou'dnt work out what weapon was being deployed against me.
it was The Strawman. now we've identified it and neutered it it can't trouble us again.

"the process is recapitulated at every level of reality." this is vital. i've said this so many times in so many ways that it really should have sunk in by now.

Not because A, B, C, D not because POLITICS, ECONOMICS, CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY.
A, B, C, D are not the cause.
A, B, C, D are the grass which makes wind visible.

Happens because happening is what happens. Below the surface manifestations, a current which can be seen in all things it moves through.

it's time unfolding itself.

the onus from now on will fall on you to redress imbalances as you become aware of them. this is the function of conversation. it is what distinguishes it from the lecture. it is why i prefer the round table to the soapbox. you are not here as passive audience but as participants.

find the correlate and articulate it. draw in that part of the map. don't try and score points because i haven't modeled every single aspect of reality in a couple of paragraphs. it's not a competition. we're trying to do it together.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
sticking with grime and keeping the mechanics of 'the real world' firmly in view the 3 year cycle i mentioned last night contains oedipal, economic and power dynamics.

a new generation is entrusted with new information (what i refer to in Vegetable Empire as 'the new dispensation') a new time-pulse, a new scale of values, a new ratio of the senses, and initially finds it's efforts to make this heard and understood blocked by the generations previous.

at this point there are a number of options available. one course, which i will continue to call cowardice though you could colour it compromise, is to renounce the new dispensation, (which ultimately is the reason for being, the purpose, the sacred endeavor) and in return for entry into the circle accept the older language (in which you are already fluent by default, having grown up hearing it) and genuflect to established power, being within it's protectorate but unable to climb to the top of its ranks.

you could give up on music entirely. or you can try and kill the king. the most vivid example of this is the choice fm clash between dizzee and asher d.
interestingly when pay as u go clashed heartless they lost but the wound wasn't fatal. pay s you go defined the coming era but at also heartless were able to carry on in a way so solid couldnt. heartless never seemed dated in the same way as so solid who, in contrast, became ancient history overnight.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
so in economic terms there is a moment for each generation of relative economic freedom. that is the time to make the challenge. if it's not made then energy is dissipated in the struggle for survival. work and family strangle the life out of it and it's done.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
we witnessed a failed attempt at oedipal rebellion on dissensus i was telling barty about yesterday or the day before when a group of music journalists, who had rallied to the post-dubstep banner and had tried to fit it into the frame of the continuum and been rejected, tried instead to mount an assault on that framework itself.

there was a whole controversy over whether the continuum 'existed' or not. this was exactly the process i have described above and it failed.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
and all of this maps very closely onto the psychological ideas for growth and openness which also, tragically, tend to peak for most people in late teens and early 20s, again before 'the real world' chokes them grey, cuts off the air supply, destroys them.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
music careers, like stormzy's for instance, can exist completely outside of this dynamic and in that sense are red herrings to a degree.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
luka said:
students are supposed to invent new politics not new musics.
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not at all. student politics is about 100 years behind the conversations on the streets. hence corbynmania. 10 years behind in terms of music is... well, at least it's still something.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
sadmanbarty said:
thinking about dubstep in it's original, pre-wobble incarnation. it's outsiders trying to make music of another culture; people like us trying to make nuum music. it's centred around a cultural signifier, this self-aware fetishisation of bass (consciously trying to link it to the sound system tradition). it's inherently cowardice (if we think that's about mapping terrains) because it's whole raison d'etre is to signify terrain that's already been mapped so as construct a connection to the music of the past.
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is it? most of those guys came out of garage.

infact until around 2005 there wasn't really this grime-dubstep separation.

if anything that's the real driving force of cultural retreat in rave music. splits.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
10 to 20 years behind. and then it comes as babyfood. as pap. in a simplified way like barty is talking about in relation to stormzy.

you can see it in the way zombie decided he was making 'eski' using wileys sounds and ideas 15 years after it had been culturally relevant.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
dubstep came from literally the other side of london. you cant get further apart in terms of distance than croydon on the one hand, newham and tower hamlets on the other. dubstep was a much much older crowd, late 20s and 30s. it had its own club nights with absolutely no overlap with grime whatsoever. yes there was one or two plasticman tunes you might have heard on rinse grime sets and geeneus crossed that bridge in the other direction and took rinse with him but they are two very, very different things.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
luka said:
dubstep came from literally the other side of london. you cant get further apart in terms of distance than croydon on the one hand, newham and tower hamlets on the other. dubstep was a much much older crowd, late 20s and 30s. it had its own club nights with absolutely no overlap with grime whatsoever. yes there was one or two plasticman tunes you might have heard on rinse grime sets and geeneus crossed that bridge in the other direction and took rinse with him but they are two very, very different things.
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which club nights. fwd isn't really a club night for a long time.

revisionism :)
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
dubstep didnt exist in 03 what are you talking about? you can challenge my knowledge of marx as much as you like but not this stuff. you were about 7 years old.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
i don't even want to defend dubstep but like man these are weird boxes to put things in. post-code commodity fetishism.
 
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