techno vs bling bling rap & r ' n b

I have actually had this conversation with Alan. I will say what I have to say tomorrow, it is time for bed. This is such a 313 list thread.

It is a trip to see AO pop up on ILM, he is such a good guy.

ie-the comparison with jazz musicians is more interesting that the misleading comparison with blingbling hip hop,which is just a whipping boy and not really relevant

Alan does have a point, but it is a point that cannot be expressed in a paragraph. If you give him 15 minutes to explain himself you will see where he is coming from. AO is not a dummy and he has reasons for feeling the way he does.

i think if we grant techno the (admittedly)defensive conceit that it is "intelligent" music (in the same way we listen to commercial hip hop without necessarily agreeing that "bitches ain't shit" or whatever) it might be a point worth considering
(xpost)

smart Black people own BET
-- James Blount (littlejohnnyjewe...), June 25th, 2003.

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plus nobody listens to techno
-- James Blount (littlejohnnyjewe...), June 25th, 2003.

intelligent black people made and still construct Techno.Techno is urban and suburban black electronic dance music from Detroit.James you need to do your damn homework because you sound like an idiot and I know every black techno producers,writers,composers, and djs would be offended by your remarks because I know I am..

yeh, where ARE Lauryn Hill or Erykah Badu now?!

(or, at all, considering that they gay roots of dance music in chicago and new york dont apply in detroit?)

interestingly, techno did not 'compromise' in this way and its difficult to pin down exactly how people could not see the correlation and progression from Depeche Mode (hugely successful) and New Order (reasonably successful) to more abstract techno from Detroit. it seems the biggest problem was techno was the first genre to emerge since dub to be not song-based music...and this was a big deal for the american market it seems. consequently techno only sold as well as dub (swap number of stoners in Cali for geeks in Detroit basically)...roughly, i can only assume. another problem may have been association with heavy drug connotations which hindered techno's progress in the States perhaps (the US always seemed to take a harder line than Europe on drug issues and references in entertainment media, censorship etc.).

(one example: the UK is small and basically the ppl setting up raves etc could know of and work with each and cover the entire island) (even so the dynamic and meaning of raves blah blah in scotland is distinctly difft from that in London say)

haha!!

considering that they gay roots of dance music in chicago and new york dont apply in detroit

huh?

the statement made by oldham in the original post is plausible, but it's way too simplistic. rap and R&B ultimately serve the conservative status quo alone deserves a chapter in a book.

what i don't get is this stance that techno is this rarified and therefore exclusionary (intelligent) artform and then the complaints about how its been mis/underrepresented! the flip is saying bling bling is popular and therefore stupid so this is why it's overrepresented. there are way too many assumptions made in both of those assertions. i think the problem also occurs when the word intelligent is used to describe music (IDM = worst genre name ever).

the labelling of techno as just "smart and innovative" completely ignores the gap between producer and consumer ie. jeff mills may have serious theoretical underpinnings to his music, but thousands of screaming, dancing, drunk and drugged maniacs at sonar could hardly be described as "intelligent".

exactly! thats exactly my point! oh, and, moodymann to thread

the thousands of drugged maniacs are at sonar, or lost.co.uk, or germany, or holland, or scotland or wherever. this is the whole thing with the gap between american dance producers and their european audiences. why is it that there are not thousands of drugged maniacs at mills gigs in detroit? detroit always sold itself on the cerebral/pure/soulful/art music thing, then disapproved at its debased trashy european audiences, bugged eyed kids at milton keynes megadromes/berlin love parade etc

or, to phrase another way, why is jeff mills more popular in tokyo/utrecht/london/stockholm than in cleveland?

and like i said, i'm not convinced that either of the reasons i gave is really correct.

i picked utrecht and stockholm rather than berlin or amsterdam, i should have added in rotterdam, leeds and dortmund rather than tokyo and london i guess.

but even if we were to compare utrecht to LA, i still think it holds. why are jeff mills and claude young more popular in european countries than their own country?

i don't think it's a money issue either - the big djs here in the states are extremely well paid.

Combined, about 100 million (US = 280).

The Love Parade (predominately techno) draws about 1 million visitors. Are you saying that a similar event in the US could pull a crowd of almost 3 million?

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0215545

honestly not trying to be rude here,but surely you are familiar with dance music and how it works

bar initial crossover tracks (innner city mainly,who i don't think were successful in america?)techno didn't really have singles (ok,there are mixes/albums/etc but i think these are only a tiny part of techno)

techno is a dance music made up of "tracks" not "songs" but noone ever seems to get this distinction

the djs buy the records to play to the techno fans at dance events...

the people who go to these events might buy the odd techno mix,but even out of all the mixes available almost all are bootlegs-i have live at the liquid room and decks fx and 909 but also loads of other mixes never released,the same as anyone i know into dance music...

i mean i've been into techno for a few years but i've never bought a record,for the simple reason that i don't mix...
records are for people who choose to dj,the beatles success isn't measured in how many people bought guitars and beatles chord books

crosspost-actually inner city did have a few hits,(big fun and good life,among others) in the uk,but yeah,in general ben is right...
techno has got so popular in dublin in the last few years,but its not going to be in the singles chart any time soon

subthread: why was/is jimi hendrix more popular than p-funk?

http://www.outernetweb.com/focal/disco/photos/index.html

http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0301/msg00012.html

having said that the ridiculuous fragmentation in dance music is a thing of the past now, and a lot of the boundaries have blurred or are hybridizing to some extent, so, in a way, its going back towards just being 'dance music'

Rave happened in the US, it just wasn't quite such a big cultural phenomenon. Ecstasy was a much bigger deal for Brits cos they needed to loosen up ;) I almost think the whole rave thing in England was more of a cultural than a musical shift anyway.

ie-the comparison with jazz musicians is more interesting that the misleading comparison with blingbling hip hop,which is just a whipping boy and not really relevant --Robin

What Alan is comparing is the context between the 'Bling Bling' of Hip Hop, ' My Trifling Man' of R & B, and ' The Yo Yo Yo', of Rap as opposed to the abstractness of Techno. The former continues to pray on racial stereotypes and values whereas Techno encourages freedom of thought and can bring people together. Because Techno has the ability to do that, therefore it is not popular to an American Society. And yes not all Hip Hop, R&B, and Rap pray on racial stereotypes or is detrimental to Blacks, but most of it is. And the stuff that doesn't, isn't popular because there's always something bad (i.e. Crack) that gets introduced into the Black Culture when Blacks begin to 'wake up'. Its all about doing whatever it takes to keep the Blacks down.

Quote: so what you're saying is: all the people making bling bling rap music and r&b are idiots, huh? Hah! what a crock. -- scott seward"

Not necessarily in so far that many Blacks are making a career for themselves not only in music but also in movies and the clothing industry through Hip Hop, R&B, and Rap which is nothing to scoff at, but why does it have to be at the expense of playing into negative racial stereotypes and values?

Quote:"The Love Parade (predominately techno) draws about 1 million visitors. Are you saying that a similar event in the US could pull a crowd of almost 3 million?
-- Siegbran"

Quote: "but nobody would ever hold something like that here anyway.And if they did, everyone would get thrown in jail for simply being there. either that or everyone would kill each other. -- scott seward"

I agree with that. I went to Love Parade in 2001, and there was a float sponsored by some S & M club. On this float there were practically naked men and women dressed in leather and metal chains...one was even suspended along the side of the float with her "tits" and "thingy" all out for everyone to see. I thought, "This can NEVER happen in America because people don't know how to act or react to something of that nature." Case in point: at the Puerto Rican parade in New York last year, chicks get their clothes ripped right off of them...its sickening.

Quote: all right, i give up. i will stop listening to R&B so as not to fuel the judicial/prison/industrial complex. and i will promise to take Alan Oldham's space robot music more seriously in the future. If they ever decide to make another Robocop movie, I will be pulling for him. -- scott seward

Please don't make a joke out of this and be a typical 'you know what'. Lord knows is not your people that's being dragged down in society.

MHK

sure you can have a sense of humor...duh but there's always a proper occasion for it and this is not it. sorry.

mhk

Oh and even more of a reason not to make fun...next.

MHK

That's pretty natural...I mean, it's produced as energetic music to dance to. Outside of its "dance" context, it's still energetic music and will be listened to as such.

what i meant is that since you say that everybody in 'your' society is being dragged down, its also a reason not to make fun. and when you make little jokey comments about a sensitive subject like this, people tend to take it the wrong way or can't figure out what the heck you mean so its best not to.

no, i'm not a big fan of hip hop etc, and hell no, I blame the music as well as the conservative fucks...this thread is about the musical component of the overall problem, so I speak of the problems in that sector. but I never for one minute doubt that the conserv's have a dirty hand in this.

its ashame that rap etc, gets rewarded based on the white stereotypes of blacks and blacks unfortunately play right along, living out what they see and hear....being typical also. and i'm sure that that's one of the things blacks who are law abiding and have their heads screwed on right feel sad about and annoyed by so they and people who agree speak out about it.

and no, I don't live in luxembourg although that would be nice. i'm in the US.

The racial component that's being brought into this is really perilous. Techno cultists claim techno is cerebral, abstracted, and innovative; techno cultists claim Americans don't want to hear black people being any of these things. If they stepped outside of their own circle, however, they might notice that this is the exact same claim made by half of everyone ever -- about indie rock, art films, literary fiction, poetry, modern art, performance art, et infinite cetera. Here's a better rule, at least for America: if fans of something are writhing about how it's too heady and abstract and intelligent for the general public to get it, chances are the general public found it boring, weird, annoying, or all three. And chances are they don't much care what the color of the person making it is, so long as whoever it is goes away quick. Sometimes this sucks, but it's by no means unique to techno or even music or even popular culture.

There's a great big kernel of truth wrapped up in the idea that the American public doesn't yet know how to comfortably conceptualize black people as being clever or abstract or cerebral, but techno is barely a foot-note to that issue. The American public certainly knows how to conceptualize white people as clever and cerebral, but that doesn't mean sales of free verse are doing any better than techno fandom.

arguments with techno fans - especially detroit-pietists - are exercises in futility.

since when was being "clever or abstract or cerebral" (this is not directed at nabitsuh) a worthy goal in music anyway? aren't shy, retiring nerds of any color defensive about the fact that they live in a world where blustery egomaniacs get all the attention? (i know i am.) where i come from we have a word for people who think that hip-hop artistes are being maniuplated/tomming/not aware of the playful absurdity of some of the poses they throw. and that word is bigoted.

I feel it is evident. People inject all kinds of things into Techno because it has no lyrics to conform to, just whatever the individual feels at that moment. If this is a forum that discusses music in general and in some way, practically all music, people can inject what they want but whether its good or bad, depends on the individual, then it should apply to Techno as well. Its just that I feel Techno is like a blank canvas and the listener isn't subjected to the confinement of lyrics and traditional sounds...so that in itself may encourage free thought (at least in terms of black contemporary music) not to mention what the detroit artists had in mind when they were making the music. And I never took the intellectual edge of Techno to be a bad thing except when its taken to the extreme...I see it more as a demonstration of contemplative expression through music by black people.

first person to spot the contradiction gets their merit badge for the day

I knew someone would say that.. and even though an artist may be thinking one thing, the music is vague enough for others to think of something else when they hear it...like say a lake or watching as the buildings go by riding on the trains...etc.

-- jess"

it applies to them as well and their music can be as contemplative.

but jess shy, retiring nerds of any color to describe you?

I guess everything from Bach to Kenny G is also the music of freedom.

-- nabisco"

I know and am aware of that. Of course...you wouldn't have to think so much when you listen to hip-hop or r&b these days as opposed to during the 80's with the more thought provoking rap acts...the meanings behind a typical hip hop and r&b song of today isn't rocket science...its all there spelled out for you and it is accepted at face value. Whereas with Techno you're able to look beyond.

and ben, i'm not saying that techno is the only instrumental music in the world that's open to free thought. i said its only so in terms of black 'contemporary' music. yes jazz is contemporary as well and also a black music but this thread is about techno is it not? so i'm refering to techno only.

In other words, maybe -- just maybe -- some people don't really want their music to be "contemplative." Possibly -- and I'm just, you know, going out on a limb and throwing this out there -- they have different taste in music, and prefer it to offer them other things, things that techno doesn't offer them. And so maybe the fact that they don't get into techno has less to do with the secret racist agenda of the prison-industrial-Rockafella conspiracy and more to do with the fact that they just like other shit, like Shania Twain or Ginuwine.

btw: what is missy saying in the chorus of work it?

that reminds me of that D-Mob video