Anthony "Shake" Shakir - "All we did was put a black face on it"

massrock

Well-known member
and all rhythm is African in origin.
only in as far as all humans are african in origin.

rhythm is inherent in the passage of time, in nature, the structure of the universe, our bodies.

and you don't need drums to have rhythms, or a stomp, a pulse. tap your foot. wherever drums originated.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
tangentially, i just witnessed ATOM™ as part of Raster Noton showcase for Transmediale and he was in the classic digi-electro 21st Century Kraftwerk mode. wicked, wicked set. highlight of the evening. even my non-electronic music girlfriend was thoroughly engrossed and impressed. home computer indeed.
 
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tyranny

Well-known member
FWIW Giorgio Moroder claims that he started using four on the floor beats after hearing a German oompah band at a wedding. IIRC he claims that he'd been trying to figure out how to get european kids dancing to black american sounds when they couldn't get their head around the beats, and suddenly realized that if german grannies could get down to a big bass drum going oonce oonce oonce oonce then european discos would go mad for it.


That's actually fascinating, have you got a link for that?

It certainly gels with my armchair theorising about the popularity of the off-beat bassline in Trance being a by-product of European folk music and specifically marching bands in the Western European coal belt...
 

zhao

there are no accidents
that sounds not quite right to me. there was already plenty of big bass drums going oonce oonce oonce oonce in black American music at that point?
 
"And, you see, no one man owns house because house music is a universal language, spoken and understood by all."
And also: it ain't where you from it's where you at.

but the problem here is one of primacy, and the central genetic axis of this music

Probably humans originated in Africa, and therefore probably drums did. Big whoopee. That's all our joint ancestry. Black Americans don't own the 4/4 beat any more than white Frenchmen because we all came from the same place. Nobody knows what colour the earliest people were; nowadays we come in a variety of hues.
Do European and Asian musicians have to disregard all of musical history right down to hitting drums in order for you to credit them with worthiness? Because modern africans are black, therefore modern white people are just copying them? Even though we have the same ancestors?

To say Kraftwerk didn't originate anything is as ridiculous as saying Juan Atkins didn't, or Little Richard didn't.
Kraftwerk were influenced by James Brown and the Beach Boys and Stockhausen and Satie and Schubert and many more. Through that and also in spite of it they created something new. Not 100% new because that's impossible, but at least as new as, say, Detroit Techno was in 1987.

Musical history is a rich back-and-forth between many different groups and individuals.
Race is a red herring for suckers.
Saying "we own this" is stupid. It's more valid for a black person to make techno than a white person?
Was it "biting" for Mark Imperial to make seminal house records in chicago waaaay back in 1985 despite being of Asian descent? (Mark Imperial was DJ Assault's favourite producer when he started DJing)

Get over your silly racial prejudice.

DJ Bone rails against commercialisation of a sound he loves, he's dissing the silly trance shit that was all over German MTV in the 90s. He doesn't say a word about race in your quote. I bet he loves Kraftwerk. I know Derrick May & Juan Atkins do. A couple of years ago I saw Juan & Karl Bartos having a chat, I don't think Juan was attacking Karl for stealing from Motown. Do you think Clear would exist without Numbers first?

Shake isn't saying "White people invented techno" he's glossing over something more complex like: Detroit techno is just an extension of Chicago house and disco + italo + depeche mode + yazoo + YMO + visage + all the other stuff they played on WBMX, some of which is by black people, some by white people, some by Japanese etc.
YMO & Italo disco sounds are influenced by older black music fused with other stuff (plastic asian exoticism / kraftwerk synth sounds).
On the other hand Detroit group A Number Of Names were trying hard to sound European, even putting on a fake accent on the so-called "first ever Detroit techno track" ShariVari.
Back and forth, you see? Everything influencing everything else all the way back to the drums created by humans who were not just the ancestors of modern black people but the ancestors of everybody.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
Edward, i was talking about the "genetic axis" of the music, not of the people who made/make it.

meaning the direct ancestral lineage of techno is funk soul disco motown gospel blues jazz slave songs, WITH loads of other influences and inspiration.

no one group "owns" anything. it is a hybrid entity. but its origins are not evenly distributed amongst various sources of inspiration; it is indeed more the offspring of one lineage than others. AND:

certain groups or classes have a history of claiming the culture of other groups or classes as their own, and getting credit for it, like Bones said. and i see, perhaps being overly sensitive, perhaps not, a little bit of the same thing happening with Techno.
 
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Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
I don't really know the pre-history of 4x4, though, and how and when it came into disco and what was the original spark for the use of it in detroit and chicago. Motown's all offbeats and (proto) breakbeats, isn't it?

Yes and no. In a lot of Motown productions the breakbeat-like percussion elements are set against the backdrop of a '4 on the top' pulse - i.e. four hits per bar but played on the snare drum rather than the bass - really famous 60s soul tunes like Rescue Me are good examples of this.
My impression is that the there was quite a lot of continuity of personnel between Motown and early US disco, when it was still at the stage of building productions from studio musician playing rather than programmed beats. But that some point and at whatever reason, the main pulse moved down from the snares to the bass drum (the bass drum on US disco tracks isn't always strictly 4 x4 though, iirc, so your point about Moroder and marching bands etc still stands).


Dunno quite why I bothered posting here as I don't know or care a great deal about the history of techno. but I'm bored and my dad inflicted a lot of Motown on me at a young age. Some of it is cool still.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
of course a lot of ancient music from around the world use an obvious, pronounced 4/4 beat. by ancient i mean forms which trace back thousands of years, such as Gamelan, Australian Aboriginal music, Amerindian, and of course, very many traditional African styles.

been meaning to do an "ancient minimalism" mix for a long time... keeps getting postponed because there are like, 7 or 8 other more urgent projects that need finishing.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
Edward, i was talking about the "genetic axis" of the music, not of the people who made/make it.

meaning the direct ancestral lineage of techno is funk soul disco motown gospel blues jazz slave songs, WITH loads of other influences and inspiration.

no one group "owns" anything. it is a hybrid entity. but its origins are not evenly distributed amongst various sources of inspiration; it is indeed more the offspring of one lineage than others. AND:

certain groups or classes have a history of claiming the culture of other groups or classes as their own, and getting credit for it, like Bones said. and i see, perhaps being overly sensitive, perhaps not, a little bit of the same thing happening with Techno.

and this is what i have been saying all along.

i find it curious, to say the least, that some of you Euros get all bent out of shape about it.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
a good listen, and yes with wit and humor! not an easy feat for a raster noton release :)
I think AtomTM released 3 albums in 2009, but, yeah, 'Liedgut' was my fave. And as for the wit and humour, it's definitely there but it's also one of the least outright jokey things he'd done for some time. Soooo tired of all the Senor Coconut stuff, for instance.

No one answered my question about whether Shake's done other stuff like 'Mr Shakir's Beat Shop'. I knew this'd happen as soon as I saw people mentioning zhao. :(
 

zhao

there are no accidents
Let's have some names then, who?

i see that happening in the world at large. and when someone on here asks the, probably innocent but all the same skewed, question, "wasn't Detroit Techno is largely (predominantly) inspired by (caused by) Euro-Synth?", it reminds me of what i perceive in the world at large, and i make a correction.

and when i do make a case for the justified central lineage of this music, a bunch of people get all huffy and puffy and turn blue in the face, and start calling me "full of shit" and "just here to frustrate them". which proves my point: if what i describe does not exist, me pointing it out would not bother anyone.

might be a far stretch, might not, but i suspect this reaction may be connected to some deeply seated insecurity, where Europe would like to feel like it invented important stuff while through out history major technological and other inventions have been made else where and brought there.
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
I think AtomTM released 3 albums in 2009, but, yeah, 'Liedgut' was my fave. And as for the wit and humour, it's definitely there but it's also one of the least outright jokey things he'd done for some time. Soooo tired of all the Senor Coconut stuff, for instance.

oh i wish you could have seen him last sat. night... so true so real so... Pure. that classic archetypal electro goodness, yet up to date in 2010 -- digital details, incremental, modular shifts that are not as much perceived as much as felt. 21st century machine funk at its best...
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
justified central genetic axis

I don't want to get involved in the 457th iteration of this argument. however, in the name of biology I must ask to you stop appropriating its concepts & misapplying them to your ideas; there is no such thing as a "genetic axis". more to the point, please cease & desist using confusing mixed metaphors about "hybrids" & inheritance & so on. Gregor Mendel does not want to be associated with your thesis on the primacy of Kenyan hand drums.

that is all.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
oh i wish you could have seen him last sat. night... so true so real so... Pure. that classic archetypal electro goodness, yet up to date in 2010 -- digital details, incremental, modular shifts that are not as much perceived as much as felt. 21st century machine funk at its best...

He's got a CD out just now called 'Music Is Better Than Pussy' which is probably what he was riffing on (according to people on ye olde AtomTM mailing list). There's some bits and pieces on his Youtube channel.
 
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