Ambient jungle = best dance music ever

0bleak

0bleak

Well-known member
reading some comments about this on the Electronic forum on Discogs - I see the word 'soulful' thrown around a couple of times - a code word for electronic music when it doesn't sound very electronic and/or is made by black people
seeing this still going on for decades on end makes me want to light myself on fire
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
nah, plenty of electronic music that doesn't sound very electronic that is not soulful in the black american sense and that isn't made by black people.

the whole trance/prog house continuum immediately springs to mind, as well as hi nrg, italo disco, eurodance, happy hardcore etc.

Plenty of music made by black and brown people that isn't soulful in this sense either, IE the whole bale funk continuum which dwarfs techno and dnb in terms of popularity.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
but yes people in electronic music discussion tend to use soul in a nebulous way where it just becomes floating and unclear — you know when you hear it, man.

In the strict sense as a derivation from blues and soul (and then later disco) it makes total sense, less so when someone calls a gritty acid stomper on Bunker records soulful. By that logic even trance is soulful.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
thirdform said:
but yes people in electronic music discussion tend to use soul in a nebulous way where it just becomes floating and unclear — you know when you hear it, man.

In the strict sense as a derivation from blues and soul (and then later disco) it makes total sense, less so when someone calls a gritty acid stomper on Bunker records soulful. By that logic even trance is soulful.
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We had this discussion a few years ago. in the beyond soul and lorenzo senni threads

padraig (u.s.) said:
to avoid confusion - we need to be clear about separating soul, the Black American artistic tradition, from soul, the supposed universal artistic quality

of course the former exists, includes James Brown etc - I have and would continue to place disco, house, etc in an "electronic black soul continuum"

but when I do I'm referring to a specific artistic-historical tradition with specific aesthetic signifiers, not some universal authenticity or lack thereof

if you want to say something does or doesn't have soul in that sense, yes, of course
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thirdform said:

i fail to see how this isn't soulful. sure, it's not soulful in the Blues People lineage of Amiri Baraca, but it is a European soulfulness.

I think it's overwrought and manipulative, but I'm not a teenage European in Poland who has only heard whatever black music is in the charts. I know the stuff its referencing, I know the stuff its a cheap imitation of. If I didn't, it might genuinely appeal to me at the age of 16 or whatever. Like I don't think soul can be either positive or negative, yet it can be both.. For me the problem isn't destroying beyond soul per se, just historically situating soul music as a particular African American form, and looking beyond that. Otherwise much turkish music goes in harder than motown, yet it wouldn't be right to call it soul, in that sense, maybe even racially insensitive, depending on how it was framed.
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0bleak

0bleak

Well-known member
It just really rubs me the wrong way like ever since reading things like journalists in the 80s something essentially like "electronic music with soul" even in reference to a project like Yazoo because someone with a quasi-"soulful" voice was singing over top.
The code is "soul" = better
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I mean i guess it depends what you mean by electronic music. if you mean instruments powered by electricity then they can be played traditionally, and soul/blues and jazz can be adapted to them.

if you mean gravitational forcefields, huge grids of energy and the sound of voltages, then a lot of electronic music doesn't sound like that. at least in the popular domain a lot of that came from the advent of acid house and affiliated genres.

But if we're talking about academic experimental music then a lot of 60s-70s musique concrete and elektronisch music still beats most popular electronic forms in that regard.
 
0bleak

0bleak

Well-known member
I'm just trying to say that I'm tired of people trying to elevate music by saying it has "soul" when it's often something that isn't electronic or "electronic sounding" about it that's giving it that "soul" that's making it better to those people.
 
0bleak

0bleak

Well-known member
I'm curious - Does the Unit 1 make you want to dance?
For me, the overwhelming "pad" just takes away the energy for me.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
0bleak said:
I'm just trying to say that I'm tired of people trying to elevate music by saying it has "soul" when it's often something that isn't electronic or "electronic sounding" about it that's giving it that "soul" that's making it better to those people.
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it could be that you don't have 'a soul' meaning you are oblivious to its value?
 
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