The realisation that you don't really like house music much any more...
- Thread starter stelfox
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Referring to my comment re the "structurally empty" quality of house contrasted with 2-step, Dominic sez:
"is this really the reason? again, i'd like to see people wrestle with tim's claim here"
I certainly wouldn't set this out as being the sole point of difference between the two styles - my point was simply that one can more readily talk about 2-step <i>generally</i> because there are more "core" components to it, the R&B and dancehall influences being obvious ones - these will always be relevant to any discussion of 2-step.
Dubstep was an attempt to cut the umbilical cord between the underlying 2-step groove and all of these other central components. The "dub" in "dubstep" stands in for all of these "lost" progenitors, and I always felt that its main signifying role was that of an absence - the dub components fill in the <i>void</i> created by the elimination of the more concretely generative components in 2-step (the dubstep I far and away prefer is the early stuff circa '00/'01 - where the void is still opening up, and the former core components are still present but increasingly assuming the form of spectral presences - Horsepower Productions' tracks with female vocals, El-B using dancehall chat etc. I can understand how others might prefer the <i>actual void</i> of subsequent dubstep/"grimm" but it's not for me so much).
Why is there a void created by the removal of R&B, dancehall etc? I'd say that it's because of the allusive <i>openness</i> of the 2-step groove, the way the frenetic syncopation always seems to lean towards resembling something else. One reason that 2-step quickly began stealing ideas from R&B, dancehall, hip hop etc. is that the groove structure demanded it, demanded that the music as a whole give body to the ideas and sensations that the groove implies (insofar as the groove all by itself already implies R&B, dancehall, hip hop etc. it is simultaneously excessive and deficient: implying a "something more" which it cannot give body to all by itself).
The house beat taken <i>as a whole</i> is, I think, distinguishable from this insofar as the groove is much more self-sufficient, it doesn't have as much of an allusive quality which would result in this surplus/deficiency aspect which is (if I remember my secondary school chemistry) the necessary precondition of a covalent bond. Ironically this self-sufficiency is a result of house signifying <i>less</i> - I mean we can talk about house signifying disco but I don't think it does anymore unless specific measures are taken by the producer to make it so. As such the house groove can marry itself to gospel, disco, techno, rock, tribal music etc. - musics which, while they all have to have some <i>level</i> of affinity with house in order to work, do not necessarily share this affinity with <i>each other</i> (contrast with 2-step where all the influences involved would be part of a certain "set" whether or not 2-step had come along to unite them). It is precisely because the house beat doesn't automatically allude to e.g. gospel that it can sustain a relationship with both gospel and techno.
This flexibility of house is a strength and a weakness: its strength is adaptability and the consequence that reinvention is always possible; its weakness from the standpoint of innovation is that this self-sufficiency can render it fairly docile - the moments of reinvention can be contrasted with the stretches of relative stasis in between when each component of the overall style is quite happy to simply execute the familiar mathematical formulae (house beat + tribal drums + echo noise + dreamy strings in background = success!).
By contrast the allusiveness of 2-step (and we can throw in jungle and grime here), its chemical combustibleness, entails a logic of innovation and exhaustion: once it was formed, the 2-step groove quickly reacted with every sonic component that it <i>could</i> react with, pouring out a ridiculously disproportionate amount of great music in a very short time until there were no more reactions possible.
The retort to everything I've said is that I'm mistaking sociological processes for sonic ones - i.e. 2-step's affinity to dancehall and R&B is better explained by reference to the music's audience than to its sonic properties. I reckon though that the truth is in between - the audience and the music (the sociology and the sonics) are created by and out of one another.
"is this really the reason? again, i'd like to see people wrestle with tim's claim here"
I certainly wouldn't set this out as being the sole point of difference between the two styles - my point was simply that one can more readily talk about 2-step <i>generally</i> because there are more "core" components to it, the R&B and dancehall influences being obvious ones - these will always be relevant to any discussion of 2-step.
Dubstep was an attempt to cut the umbilical cord between the underlying 2-step groove and all of these other central components. The "dub" in "dubstep" stands in for all of these "lost" progenitors, and I always felt that its main signifying role was that of an absence - the dub components fill in the <i>void</i> created by the elimination of the more concretely generative components in 2-step (the dubstep I far and away prefer is the early stuff circa '00/'01 - where the void is still opening up, and the former core components are still present but increasingly assuming the form of spectral presences - Horsepower Productions' tracks with female vocals, El-B using dancehall chat etc. I can understand how others might prefer the <i>actual void</i> of subsequent dubstep/"grimm" but it's not for me so much).
Why is there a void created by the removal of R&B, dancehall etc? I'd say that it's because of the allusive <i>openness</i> of the 2-step groove, the way the frenetic syncopation always seems to lean towards resembling something else. One reason that 2-step quickly began stealing ideas from R&B, dancehall, hip hop etc. is that the groove structure demanded it, demanded that the music as a whole give body to the ideas and sensations that the groove implies (insofar as the groove all by itself already implies R&B, dancehall, hip hop etc. it is simultaneously excessive and deficient: implying a "something more" which it cannot give body to all by itself).
The house beat taken <i>as a whole</i> is, I think, distinguishable from this insofar as the groove is much more self-sufficient, it doesn't have as much of an allusive quality which would result in this surplus/deficiency aspect which is (if I remember my secondary school chemistry) the necessary precondition of a covalent bond. Ironically this self-sufficiency is a result of house signifying <i>less</i> - I mean we can talk about house signifying disco but I don't think it does anymore unless specific measures are taken by the producer to make it so. As such the house groove can marry itself to gospel, disco, techno, rock, tribal music etc. - musics which, while they all have to have some <i>level</i> of affinity with house in order to work, do not necessarily share this affinity with <i>each other</i> (contrast with 2-step where all the influences involved would be part of a certain "set" whether or not 2-step had come along to unite them). It is precisely because the house beat doesn't automatically allude to e.g. gospel that it can sustain a relationship with both gospel and techno.
This flexibility of house is a strength and a weakness: its strength is adaptability and the consequence that reinvention is always possible; its weakness from the standpoint of innovation is that this self-sufficiency can render it fairly docile - the moments of reinvention can be contrasted with the stretches of relative stasis in between when each component of the overall style is quite happy to simply execute the familiar mathematical formulae (house beat + tribal drums + echo noise + dreamy strings in background = success!).
By contrast the allusiveness of 2-step (and we can throw in jungle and grime here), its chemical combustibleness, entails a logic of innovation and exhaustion: once it was formed, the 2-step groove quickly reacted with every sonic component that it <i>could</i> react with, pouring out a ridiculously disproportionate amount of great music in a very short time until there were no more reactions possible.
The retort to everything I've said is that I'm mistaking sociological processes for sonic ones - i.e. 2-step's affinity to dancehall and R&B is better explained by reference to the music's audience than to its sonic properties. I reckon though that the truth is in between - the audience and the music (the sociology and the sonics) are created by and out of one another.
brilliant argument!
so what about my other question, which is why hasn't there been a new gay black american music movement?
that is, cannot the hardcore continuum be explained *politically* as a series of attempts by black british people to open up new ground to occupy once a zone of music had been "gentrified" by whites -- i realize that this is a simplistic proposition and gives far too much weight to political factors than other factors, and ignores the racially mixed reality of the leading edge of hardcore -- but for the sake of argument, let's suppose this as the case
and so the question = why didn't gay black americans open new ground for themselves once white europeans and americans began to "gentrify" house?
or is this entire line of questioning wrong headed???
that is, maybe gay black americans didn't have to open up new ground precisely for the reasons that tim states = the sheer flexibility and openness (living room for all politically) of the house structure -- such that the "shelter" sound was never actually colonized or gentrified (though i'd say in fact it was)
and what kind of music is the younger generation of gay black america into??? commercial r'n'b? if so, why? why didn't they develop their own underground dance scene with a new style of underground dance music? or is this perhaps b/c gay blacks are no longer so marginalized as they were in the 1980s, such that they don't require their own undergound scene and sonic territory?
AGAIN, i realize that i'm emphasizing political factors here probably far more than is warranted -- but i find it very odd that "heterosexual" blacks have innovated so much in past 15 years, but not "gay" blacks -- or is it simply the case that a lot of hip hop, grime, dancehall, jungle producers have been in the closet?
so what about my other question, which is why hasn't there been a new gay black american music movement?
that is, cannot the hardcore continuum be explained *politically* as a series of attempts by black british people to open up new ground to occupy once a zone of music had been "gentrified" by whites -- i realize that this is a simplistic proposition and gives far too much weight to political factors than other factors, and ignores the racially mixed reality of the leading edge of hardcore -- but for the sake of argument, let's suppose this as the case
and so the question = why didn't gay black americans open new ground for themselves once white europeans and americans began to "gentrify" house?
or is this entire line of questioning wrong headed???
that is, maybe gay black americans didn't have to open up new ground precisely for the reasons that tim states = the sheer flexibility and openness (living room for all politically) of the house structure -- such that the "shelter" sound was never actually colonized or gentrified (though i'd say in fact it was)
and what kind of music is the younger generation of gay black america into??? commercial r'n'b? if so, why? why didn't they develop their own underground dance scene with a new style of underground dance music? or is this perhaps b/c gay blacks are no longer so marginalized as they were in the 1980s, such that they don't require their own undergound scene and sonic territory?
AGAIN, i realize that i'm emphasizing political factors here probably far more than is warranted -- but i find it very odd that "heterosexual" blacks have innovated so much in past 15 years, but not "gay" blacks -- or is it simply the case that a lot of hip hop, grime, dancehall, jungle producers have been in the closet?
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Yeah re the gay black audience I'm honestly not sure Dominic - the "black" community in Australia (by which I mean people of Jamaican or African descent rather than our Aboriginal population) is so small that it's rare to see a black-dominated <i>straight</i> dancefloor, let alone a gay one... so I certainly don't have much in the way of empirical evidence.
I was under the (perhaps erroneous) impression that the black gay community in the US was divided between those loyal to traditional house and garage, and those into R&B. I think you're right that the former scene has been gentrified, but from my perspective a lot of the discourse around that sort of house music in the US seems characterised by a sense of its enduring "underground" status - on the one hand because capital-D Dance music never caught on generally in the US, and on the other because black America seems so intrinsically linked to R&B/Hip Hop. I remember interviewing Frankie Knuckles a few years ago and he was going on about how it would only be in retrospect that black America realised that house was its "true" underground music, and generally being very resentful and bitter about hip hop/r&b dominance.
I'm very dubious about this line of argument! But perhaps if enough people believe in it it would explain why gay black America hasn't given rise to a large new "scene" post-house.
I was under the (perhaps erroneous) impression that the black gay community in the US was divided between those loyal to traditional house and garage, and those into R&B. I think you're right that the former scene has been gentrified, but from my perspective a lot of the discourse around that sort of house music in the US seems characterised by a sense of its enduring "underground" status - on the one hand because capital-D Dance music never caught on generally in the US, and on the other because black America seems so intrinsically linked to R&B/Hip Hop. I remember interviewing Frankie Knuckles a few years ago and he was going on about how it would only be in retrospect that black America realised that house was its "true" underground music, and generally being very resentful and bitter about hip hop/r&b dominance.
I'm very dubious about this line of argument! But perhaps if enough people believe in it it would explain why gay black America hasn't given rise to a large new "scene" post-house.
yeah -- it's a bit of a mystery to me
perhaps there were certain conditions that obtained from, say, 1970 to 1990 that allowed for a cohesive black gay dance community -- a community that was at the cutting of edge of music during those years, from early disco through the first phases of chicago house
so if the 80s saw the height of homophobia, in the 90s the gay black male was a much less threatening figure than (the caricature) of his heterosexual counterpart = gangster/predator
the gay black male ceased to be a marginal figure, at least in some ways -- and so the community lost its cohesion, its creative pathos???
i don't know -- i'm really grabbing at straws for an explanation!!!
but i think that if black gay culture were to evolve another kind of dance music or scene, then house music would be abandoned en masse shortly thereafter by whites
i.e., the persistence of house has something to do with the failure of gay black culture to rival the creativity of the masculine, heterosexual streets
which is to say, there are things about gay black culture that middle class whites find more attractive and/or less threatening than straight black music culture
(so how do things stand with reggaeton? is reggaeton more hospitable to gays than dancehall and hip hop, where gay participation is for the most part invisible)
perhaps there were certain conditions that obtained from, say, 1970 to 1990 that allowed for a cohesive black gay dance community -- a community that was at the cutting of edge of music during those years, from early disco through the first phases of chicago house
so if the 80s saw the height of homophobia, in the 90s the gay black male was a much less threatening figure than (the caricature) of his heterosexual counterpart = gangster/predator
the gay black male ceased to be a marginal figure, at least in some ways -- and so the community lost its cohesion, its creative pathos???
i don't know -- i'm really grabbing at straws for an explanation!!!
but i think that if black gay culture were to evolve another kind of dance music or scene, then house music would be abandoned en masse shortly thereafter by whites
i.e., the persistence of house has something to do with the failure of gay black culture to rival the creativity of the masculine, heterosexual streets
which is to say, there are things about gay black culture that middle class whites find more attractive and/or less threatening than straight black music culture
(so how do things stand with reggaeton? is reggaeton more hospitable to gays than dancehall and hip hop, where gay participation is for the most part invisible)
the tangent this thread is going on is sort of nuts, so i feel the need to step in here ...
- first of all, the 80s were NOT the height of homophobia in america. the huge popularity of madonna's "vogue" video alone should throw that idea in the dustbin. the height of homophobia in america was probably the late 70s, immediately post-stonewall, and that didn't last long ... it only took a few years after disco "died" for pop-dance to explode in the charts.
- secondly, the idea that gay urban blacks were creating chicago house as an alternative to r&b is sort of ridiculous. "garage music" is totally rooted in early r&b, you pick a selection of big-name early american house djs and producers (people like tony humphries, steve silk hurley, todd terry etc) and you'll see they were working in competition with the producers who would define "proper r&b" - your jam & lewis, jellybean benitez types who had a huge influence on what early house producers were doing (etc etc)
- third (and this goes out to you, dominic!) i think it is incredibly patronizing to cite the decline of american house music as a lack of creativity in the gay black community.
- fourth, it is also incredibly patronizing to assume that gay black americans are somehow dissociated from american r&b - i have no idea why you assume that the narratives in house are necessarily much more explicity homoerotic than in r&b (i assure, based on how wildly popular r&b is among the gay audience here, that they're not)
- fifth, this is absolutely bonkers: "but i think that if black gay culture were to evolve another kind of dance music or scene, then house music would be abandoned en masse shortly thereafter by whites"
- finally, if you want an easy target to hang the black american unease about "house music" on, you can hang it on an uneasiness about drugs. i find it utterly bizarre how some people first glamorize the devestation of the american inner city by drugs, then valorize the achievements of the early house pioneers and their explicitly-druggy headtrip music. i mean, i like explicitly-druggy headtrip music, but as a suburbanite, the "stakes" of my experimentation are much lower than for those of an inner-city dweller, and the drug damage in my generation (and believe me, it's there) is much sparser.
- first of all, the 80s were NOT the height of homophobia in america. the huge popularity of madonna's "vogue" video alone should throw that idea in the dustbin. the height of homophobia in america was probably the late 70s, immediately post-stonewall, and that didn't last long ... it only took a few years after disco "died" for pop-dance to explode in the charts.
- secondly, the idea that gay urban blacks were creating chicago house as an alternative to r&b is sort of ridiculous. "garage music" is totally rooted in early r&b, you pick a selection of big-name early american house djs and producers (people like tony humphries, steve silk hurley, todd terry etc) and you'll see they were working in competition with the producers who would define "proper r&b" - your jam & lewis, jellybean benitez types who had a huge influence on what early house producers were doing (etc etc)
- third (and this goes out to you, dominic!) i think it is incredibly patronizing to cite the decline of american house music as a lack of creativity in the gay black community.
- fourth, it is also incredibly patronizing to assume that gay black americans are somehow dissociated from american r&b - i have no idea why you assume that the narratives in house are necessarily much more explicity homoerotic than in r&b (i assure, based on how wildly popular r&b is among the gay audience here, that they're not)
- fifth, this is absolutely bonkers: "but i think that if black gay culture were to evolve another kind of dance music or scene, then house music would be abandoned en masse shortly thereafter by whites"
- finally, if you want an easy target to hang the black american unease about "house music" on, you can hang it on an uneasiness about drugs. i find it utterly bizarre how some people first glamorize the devestation of the american inner city by drugs, then valorize the achievements of the early house pioneers and their explicitly-druggy headtrip music. i mean, i like explicitly-druggy headtrip music, but as a suburbanite, the "stakes" of my experimentation are much lower than for those of an inner-city dweller, and the drug damage in my generation (and believe me, it's there) is much sparser.
and before someone gets all "b-b-b-but rap is about drugs too" on me, i have to point out
1) the popularity of rap among african-americans (vis-a-vis gospel, r&b, soul) is not as big as most people think.
2) "house" is perceived to be about "hard drugs" - acid, speed, coke, etc. even the hardest rap usually doesn't carry those associations - most dudes are all about weed&drink, coke&crack being reserved for the customers, scarface-style - and when it does, it's in a cautionary vein.
1) the popularity of rap among african-americans (vis-a-vis gospel, r&b, soul) is not as big as most people think.
2) "house" is perceived to be about "hard drugs" - acid, speed, coke, etc. even the hardest rap usually doesn't carry those associations - most dudes are all about weed&drink, coke&crack being reserved for the customers, scarface-style - and when it does, it's in a cautionary vein.
dominic, sorry to have been so snippy yesterday but you're still painly not reading what i've written before going off on your own tangents. electrohouse is very white, very hetero, very functionalist, very SAFE music that does exactly what it says on the tin and little more (to my mind and ear at least). it is *this* stuff that i am calling non-threatening and homogenous. it is this stuff that has had any kind of "otherness" bleached out of it, this stuff that i'm taking issue with, so you've just written about 1,000 words of hypothesis based on the exact opposite of what i clearly stated!
stelfox said:
this assertion seems to me to be based entirely on a reading of the music itself but does not apply to the 'scene' at all. I was down at secret sundaze the other day, which is about as electrohouse as it gets in london, and I'd say the crowd was one of the most diverse (in terms of race, nationality, sexuality & class) I've ever encountered in a club.
vfozi said:
yes, but don't you think that maybe the gay black underground had a kind of cohesiveness in the 1970 to 1990 period that it perhaps lost afterwards -- again, i'm SPECULATING openly -- but let's say stonewall allows for the emergence of a gay black dance culture clearly marked off from black culture as a whole -- and let's say, further, that AIDS served to isolate the gay black community in the 80s, and imparted a darkness, urgency, death-consciousness to the music -- but that post-1990, thanks to people like madonna ("vogue" was 1989/90), gay blacks were welcomed into mainstream, or at least were more "welcome" than their hetero black counterparts, whom mainstream america continues to fear as hyper violent, hyper sexualized beings
vfozi said:
except that house did emerge during these years as a separate genre -- and if you listen to tapes of ron hardy it's mainly chicago house and european dance, not chicago house and commercial r'n'b (save for the odd prince song or something)
vfozi said:
true -- this was certainly an aspect of the 80s sound, especially in new york -- but there was also the starkly modern, drug-crazed aspect
vfozi said:
yes, but it's even more "patronizing" toward white americans and europeans!
i.e., it's a very simplistic model, but i'm setting up white people as following the lead of black people in the area of dance music -- and so if the question is posed, "why don't all these supposedly trendy and fashionable white people embrace hip hop, grime, dancehall, reggaeton -- all these wonderfully inventive new sounds coming from the streets -- why do they play it so safe?" -- then i'm suggesting that middle class whites, for complicated reasons that i've yet to go into, are enamored by the two related images of (1) gay black club hedonism circa 70/90 and (2) europhile fantasy of aristocratic decadence -- SUCH THAT if there were to be a re-emergent gay black underground club scene w/ a new kind of dance music and cultural politics, then maybe white middle class fixations would be unsettled and change
i of course realize that in bringing up race issues i need to choose my language very carefully -- and that in this medium it's really not possible to choose language carefully, to make arguments adequately -- so i'm relying on people to take what i say as open speculation, not considered positions
vfozi said:
no - i don't make that assumption at all! -- rather, i suspect that this is where a great deal of the gay black audience has migrated to
rather, what i don't understand is why gay blacks no longer seem to have an UNDERGROUND music and club scene -- unless that scene is the shelter-style house scene -- i.e., r'n'b is commercial music -- so maybe it's the case that it's an underground culture where the soundtrack is commercial r'n'b??? -- if so, why aren't they making music that's more underground??? i think that's a fair question and one worth thinking about and for which i haven't the slightest answer -- which is why i posed the question!
vfozi said:
i'm discussing music and underground culture together -- i.e., why is there not a underground gay black scene organized around a new kind of underground gay black dance music?
again, i assume that gay blacks are a core constituency for r'n'b -- and yet, r'n'b is commercial music -- so why no new underground music?
vfozi said:
why? i think if you look at history of hip culture in the 20th century, that gay black hipsters were the ones truly in the vanguard -- and that white taste followed gay black taste
again, this is a gross simplification
but the original question was -- "why don't white middle class people get into the super innovative sounds of the heterosexual black street?" -- and i'm suggesting that the answer is that that's not how the dynamic works -- rather, the dynamic is for hip white taste to follow gay black developments
vfozi said:
except that i think gay culture in general, whether black or white, is far more drug friendly than straight culture, especially in america
(and i say this having plenty of experience of gay clubs and culture, and having had plenty of gay friends, both black and white)
moreover, the question i posed is not "why have gay blacks abandoned house music" -- rather, my question is, "why have gay blacks not evolved a new kind of underground dance music?"
vfozi said:
getting back to the timeline . . . .
stonewall was in the late 60s -- thereby allowing for the blossoming of gay culture in the 70s
and i'd say that mid-70s saw a kind of vogue for gay culture and clubs across america
and then AIDS brought an end to this -- such that height of homophobia was indeed the mid-80s
however, your "pop dance" comment is well taken (so i guess the facts aren't seamless or non-contradictory)
Canada J Soup
Monkey Man
It makes people self-obsessed and self-important, gives them the attention span of a mosquito and reduces their critical faculties practically to zero. Talking shit and ordering drinks takes precedence over music and dancing.dominic said:
I have no problem with people doing coke either, but the club experience you get with a coke crowd is rarely going to be one where the music being played is much more than background noise for the majority of punters. Pretty much any weekend night at APT (you're in NYC, right?) will provide a prime example of what I'm talking about...and if the music isn't that important to most of the punters, it's just not going to have the same vibe for those who might primarily be there to dance in a crowd.
My perspective may be skewed by the fact that the few gay black guys I know are people I've met through gay white friends...but my understanding is that a lot of openly gay black men have a less distinct identity within the US gay scene than they did in the 70s and 80s. I guess maybe the 'down low' scene (hetro identifying black men who maintain straight relationships but often hook up with other hetro identifying black men) might be a clearer descendant of the 70s and 80s gay black scene...but it seemingly has a hyper-masculine / thug vibe and doesn't want to have anything to do with what is regarded as 'faggot' music (so musically it's all about mainstream hip-hop).dominic said:
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This must be a european thing. Haha.
I mean, I'm from Chicago and all through junior high and high school i was pretty aware of it, the ghetto house thing going on in the background. Chants at basketball games, "you put your hands up and and feet down low, and thats the way you gigilo" (alternate, swim-team-on-the-bus chant: "her legs up high my dick down low, thats the way you bang a ho" - yikes) BUT. House didnt have much of a presence in my life beyond this, and, like, "Praise You" on MTV.
And so my discovery of classic house was basically a college thing! And it coincided with the recognition of house in Chicago by the city and the mayor (finally), so I get to dance to all these classic DJs every wed. during the summer right in grant park, lake michigan on my right, the skyline directly to my left! (2 days ago was Marshall Jefferson, actually.) So I don't see myself getting sick of it at all - rather just discovering it. But it's like when I was discovering Jazz in high school - I know that, to a degree, my interest is temporary; my favorite music to dance to is rap and dancehall, music i can grind and 2-step and jump and do whatever to. A good rap DJ will have you switching up styles constantly, changing songs every 2 minutes or minute and a half or single MINUTE or 30 seconds! suddenly you're into reggaeton! then dancehall! then LEAN BACK (ok thats old now but bear with me) and then BAM a biggie acappella on top, and you rap along and dance and have a great time and the groove keeps changing, a changing same, no extra-long house transitions, constant rhthmic shifts, blends that make the familiar unfamiliar.
So yeah, I see what Dave is getting at, but I think it might be a very Euro thing.
(note - i didnt read this thread, apologies if i've interrupted/repeated something)
I mean, I'm from Chicago and all through junior high and high school i was pretty aware of it, the ghetto house thing going on in the background. Chants at basketball games, "you put your hands up and and feet down low, and thats the way you gigilo" (alternate, swim-team-on-the-bus chant: "her legs up high my dick down low, thats the way you bang a ho" - yikes) BUT. House didnt have much of a presence in my life beyond this, and, like, "Praise You" on MTV.
And so my discovery of classic house was basically a college thing! And it coincided with the recognition of house in Chicago by the city and the mayor (finally), so I get to dance to all these classic DJs every wed. during the summer right in grant park, lake michigan on my right, the skyline directly to my left! (2 days ago was Marshall Jefferson, actually.) So I don't see myself getting sick of it at all - rather just discovering it. But it's like when I was discovering Jazz in high school - I know that, to a degree, my interest is temporary; my favorite music to dance to is rap and dancehall, music i can grind and 2-step and jump and do whatever to. A good rap DJ will have you switching up styles constantly, changing songs every 2 minutes or minute and a half or single MINUTE or 30 seconds! suddenly you're into reggaeton! then dancehall! then LEAN BACK (ok thats old now but bear with me) and then BAM a biggie acappella on top, and you rap along and dance and have a great time and the groove keeps changing, a changing same, no extra-long house transitions, constant rhthmic shifts, blends that make the familiar unfamiliar.
So yeah, I see what Dave is getting at, but I think it might be a very Euro thing.
(note - i didnt read this thread, apologies if i've interrupted/repeated something)
re: gay u.s. blacks
i'll be honest its kind of creepy talking about human beings this way! "i demand you people entertain me!" ok don't get defensive, i know you didn't mean it that way, just cautioning...
but
y'all have never heard of the 'homo thugs'? rap music = the world's music, y'all. Gay, straight, white, black, hispanic, male, female, we all love us some rappers.
To be honest, before it became a hipster-thang i thought the whole cam'ron/dipset appeal was rather flamboyant (my friend E insists Cam is gay, actually). I mean, there's been a debate about the 'no homo' thing but honestly - that kinda shit made me think the opposite of how most of his straight audience probably interprets it! And the pink, and the purple...songs called "get em girls," "oh boy," the big earings, the fur coats, and of course, this album cover:
i'll be honest its kind of creepy talking about human beings this way! "i demand you people entertain me!" ok don't get defensive, i know you didn't mean it that way, just cautioning...
but
y'all have never heard of the 'homo thugs'? rap music = the world's music, y'all. Gay, straight, white, black, hispanic, male, female, we all love us some rappers.
To be honest, before it became a hipster-thang i thought the whole cam'ron/dipset appeal was rather flamboyant (my friend E insists Cam is gay, actually). I mean, there's been a debate about the 'no homo' thing but honestly - that kinda shit made me think the opposite of how most of his straight audience probably interprets it! And the pink, and the purple...songs called "get em girls," "oh boy," the big earings, the fur coats, and of course, this album cover:
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DavidD said:
then why "caution" me if you know i didn't mean it that way?
rather, if people want to know why house has become so "gentrified" or so sonically "european," then i think you have to consider, first, that gay blacks have kept to the traditionalist shelter sound within the confines of house, and, second, have cast their lot w/ commercial r'n'b -- an above ground sound that's not going to appeal to people drawn to the total situation of an underground dance scene
and then a third possibility, which canada soup raised before you did, is the "homo thugs" end of rap music -- as someone who's not too conversant in rap, this is more or less news to me, but probably isn't news to lots of other people here -- let's just say that rap as a whole is earthy and funky and has a whole different set of cultural politics than the original house scene, which was more dark, death-conscious and hedonistic w/ a weird exchange b/w black disco and europhile dance sounds -- so maybe "homo thug" music is too far removed from the culture and sounds of house to redirect or inform it
but again, i say this not being too familiar with the dipset crew or "homo thug" scence
HOWEVER, at least a couple members of dispet crew will be at east river amphitheater in a couple hours to perform with heat crew, kano, roll deep, etc -- and i for one will definitely be there
DavidD said:
errrr, rap may be hegemonic and therefore "the world's music" -- but that doesn't mean we all love rap or spend much time following it
and yeah, the leading edges of music appear to have moved in a rap direction, i.e., they're all heavily informed by american hip hop -- but that doesn't mean that something valuable won't be lost if house becomes completely irrelevant and no other gay black "dance" music (as opposed to "street" music) is invented to replace it
and, last, i think the best way to attack my position, from all that's gone before on this thread, would be to challenge such distinctions as commercial vs. underground and street vs. dance -- i.e., maybe i'm trapped in obsolete categories???
another weird wrinkle is that most of the guys who pioneered the shelter sound were straight = timmy regisford, etc
but the really dark chicago stuff -- which crossed over w/ straight europeans -- was made by gay people
though all in all, the scene was more mixed than i'm perhaps suggesting
(also -- anybody here ever hear rumors to effect that dr dre is gay???)
and, no, this is not supposed to be an "out" all the gay people in hip hop thread
it's just a case of me wondering what happened to the gay black music scene -- again, maybe it's lost its identity and cohesion -- and there's been a kind of diffusion of gay influence? -- such that there's a high degree of black gay participation in hip hop and people just don't realize it b/c it's "invisible" in terms of hip hop's overall cultural politics
but the really dark chicago stuff -- which crossed over w/ straight europeans -- was made by gay people
though all in all, the scene was more mixed than i'm perhaps suggesting
(also -- anybody here ever hear rumors to effect that dr dre is gay???)
and, no, this is not supposed to be an "out" all the gay people in hip hop thread
it's just a case of me wondering what happened to the gay black music scene -- again, maybe it's lost its identity and cohesion -- and there's been a kind of diffusion of gay influence? -- such that there's a high degree of black gay participation in hip hop and people just don't realize it b/c it's "invisible" in terms of hip hop's overall cultural politics