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 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