sadmanbarty
Well-known member
Like the reasons why you like contemporary dancehall are the reasons why i soured off it, ditto mumble rap. It's hard to speak about this stuff in a detached way when people try to fit everything into a progressive vs reactionary box - i think that's too ontologising, a tune can have progressive and reactionary elements simultaneously if u feel me. further more these are political concepts and they don't map onto music all that well. A reactionary in politics would be someone who would be for the reintroduction of feudalism and the catholic monarchy. I think it would be a stretch to put a disco or 90s ragga purist in the same box.
I find the critical narrative here woefully lacking mainly because (despite what critics would say) they're still basing everything on that punk shit.
maybe purism vs openness are better concepts for the stuff we are talking about. but these again should only be considered as gradations. like it would be better to argue that dubstep is too purist garage than argue that it was reactionary. that just throws a lot of music in the bin. now noone has to like dubstep most of it is shit but we need to not buy into a construct because it sounds evangelical
lots of gems in here, but what really struck me is this that third sees what luke calls 'cultural cowardice' where i would see innovation.
my opinion is that you do something for two or three years, then kill it and don't come back to it and this produces the healthiest innovation. third's possibly more sympathetic to the notion that in doing this you're stifling lots of developments before they an occur or fully crystallise.