Cultural Cowardice

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thirdform said:

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.

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as soon as i left the house to go and do some work the full import of this really hit home and i wanted to rush right back and start talking about it again. you're on to something important.

and i think it relates both to why you think i'm doing dubstep a diservice and to why the young-ish people want to see what is salvageable from the post-step over on that other thread.

at the point of the split a whole world of possibilities is lost and, as you say, put in the dustbin.

the split isn't the split of an ameoba where no genetic information is lost. it's Shem and Shaun, pen and post, neither complete without the other.

'rave' is the last mass moment of youth unity and it's all fractures from there, some musically exciting, some socially utopian (in intent at least) but you don't get that same big umbrella again.

it's why established power went to war against it (and won, for now.)

ultimately what thirdform and the post-step apologists are saying is that the movement has to cross
class barriers as well as ethnic barriers.

i think if that's true, and it probably is, then the onus is on middle-class musicians to join that conversation rather than try to create parallel scenes with parasitic creative relationships with their working class equivalents.

if that fear and distrust barrier can be crossed then the world is up for grabs.

is that cultural marxism?

or is it acid communism?

luka said:

don't try and score points because i haven't modeled every single aspect of reality in a couple of paragraphs

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well idk man I wasn't really trying to do either - score points or model reality

definitely wasn't trying to get stuck in some indefinable "politics economics culture technology" morass

I was just interested in exploring of the power dynamics of retreat, how it relates to cultural privilege and capital

to examining the things - myths, archetypes - you mentioned upthread that people invest in "in an unexamined way" and how they relate to retreat

I think I was pretty specific, i.e.

"seems like cultural cowardice is largely history of (mostly) white people choosing to exercise their cultural capital, or not, and/or consumers deciding to buy the resulting cultural output, or not"

"i.e. people of color, queer people, etc have always de facto made art from outside those structures, they usually haven't had the choice of embrace or no embrace"

it's certainly not a strawman - let alone a weapon to deploy against anyone. how you would arrive at that conclusion - honestly it's totally baffling to me.

idc at all about points or winning. whatever I get out of this place to keep coming back after so long, it definitely ain't that.

we have such a basic failure to communicate that the effort doesn't really seem worth it

and sometimes - like now - I just find you very, very tiring to deal with, and the feeling seems mutual

that's not a comment on the validity of your projects - actually I very much respect that operating on the bullshit/genius margin

you might ask yourself why repeatedly have these problems with people (not that I'm blameless or anything)

so I'll leave you guys to it

padraig yesterday i really made an effort to incorporate your approach and point out the ways in which it integrates with mine so it seems a funny time to flounce off. one of my major projects was to keep you onside and onboard. obviously it's going wind me up if you keep trying to dismiss me as a crypto-jungian or a snakeoil salesman and naturally i'm going to defend myself against that attempt to label me but i thought we were really getting somewhere in our efforts (admittedly its a lot of effort, but to me it seems worthwhile) to communicate. to find a shared language basically.

a sample of some bloke going 'dread' to remind you of ragga jungle

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ah, im a bit sad about that. i really thought i'd bridged a gap there, or at least begun too. felt important.

you catch more flies with honey.

padraig (u.s.) said:

"seems like cultural cowardice is largely history of (mostly) white people choosing to exercise their cultural capital, or not, and/or consumers deciding to buy the resulting cultural output, or not"

"i.e. people of color, queer people, etc have always de facto made art from outside those structures, they usually haven't had the choice of embrace or no embrace"

.

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i don't know if it's a zero sum game though

the mainstream (however you define it) embracing disco ideas doesn't - in the long run - damage the underground gay disco culture, which continues to evolve, mutate, regenerate, leading to house

the mainstream's embrace of disco ideas changes mainstream pop music, which is a/ definitely a net enrichment of mainstream pop on a musical level, and b/ possibly an enrichment of it attitudinally and politically

and what's the alternative, the better way of going about it?

to truly fully engage with disco as a subculture, as a outsider, would mean moving to NYC, becoming gay, and living in that microworld

that's not going happen, so the partial engagements with the music or aspects of it, are what results

it's fine to prefer the unadulterated pure form of it as culture (albeit as kind of time travel style projection towards an era), rather than say Blondie's "heart of glass"

but i don't think "Heart of Glass" detracted from disco in its pure form by existing

and within the context of punk and its prejudices (all the Legs McNeil anti-disco crap) it was a non-cowardly move for Blondie

although i'm sure they were just responding as musicians, like ooh this sound is cool.

another beneficial side effect of this process: the mainstream's embrace of the underground's idea forces the underground to come up with new shit, and that causes music to keep moving forward

Leo said:

you catch more flies with honey.

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that's exactly the conclusion i came to last year. it's why i was spreading the honey.

quite appropriate to discuss splits in scenes while simultaneously failing to keep a coalition intact i guess.

sadmanbarty said:

that's a great example of what i'm talking about.

the drums are saying: remember breakbeats from hardcore

the spooky shit in the background's saying: remember darkcore

that scrapey bass is saying: remember ed rush and optical

those blips are saying:remember bleep and bass


pointing to parts of the map that have already been covered. that's a retreat.

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I mean probably but that happened across the entire dance music continuum, nuum and non-nuum alike. Simon has a good bit in E flash towards the end about it. im more interested in what makes those retreats/why they happen as opposed to let's analyse their content like a statistician. unite form and content.