Monday, September 15, 2008

A slight tangent..:Article for the Globalist Magazine

Well My work on the blog was interrupted by a side project for the globalist magazine, who wanted me to write the following article. I figured, as its on the same topic, I may aswell include it here.

It was a strange experience, trying to write about this in an academic format, but it may have gone ok. well see.

Rhythm Revolution? A Debate on the Politics of Underground Electronic Music
Lillian Morrissey

Midnight, July 13: Creeping out of the semi darkness of the industrial outskirts of London is a deep, repetitive beat. It is embedded in a neon spectacle of lights and movement that I can see more clearly with every advancing step, tucked under a highway underpass, between a canal and a vacant lot. Cars pass overhead, entirely unaware of the raucous below. The highway becomes a metaphor for division between different worlds: the underground psytrance party below, the rest of society passing by so close above. What exactly is the relationship between the two?

Played at ‘raves’, ‘squat parties’, ‘warehouse parties’, ‘bush doofs’ and ‘open airs’, underground electronic music (electronic music that exists outside of mainstream club culture) is generally explored in a variety of alternative settings that avoid the legal and commercial confines of legitimate for-profit music venues. Like their predecessors from the acid house raves of the late 80s ‘Second Summer of Love’, by avoiding mainstream venues, underground electronic music communities provide themselves with greater freedom in terms of music, drug taking, artistic expression, and behavioural norms. Further, underground electronic music itself is inherently experimental and evolves as rapidly as technology will allow. This has led to a huge diversification of the ‘rave scene’ into a variety of different communities, based around different genres of electronic music that are mutations of previous genres.

It is this fragmentation and cultural bricolage that has become the focus of postmodern investigation into ‘rave’ culture. Simon Reynolds, author Generation ecstasy: Into the world of techno and rave culture summarises the postmodern perspective by describing rave culture as ‘geared towards fascination rather than meaning, sensation rather than sensibility; creating an appetite for impossible states of hypersimulation’. Rooted in Baudrillard’s simulacrum, the relationship between underground electronic music and the wider community is one based in surfaces and form, rather than meaning or depth.

Ironically, the dominant neoconservative take on underground electronic music culture echoes the postmodern in its conclusions. Academics such as Hal Foster, author of Recodings, consider the ‘rave’ as one example of the individualism, hedonism, escapism and meaninglessness of modern amusement. From this perspective, as from the postmodern, underground electronic music culture represents a retreat from wider society for the pursuit of superficial and apolitical distraction.

Scott Hudson, Author of The Rave: Spiritual Healing in Modern Western Subcultures rejects this approach. Hudson’s main criticism of the above are that both perspectives neglect testimonials of actual members of these communities. Hudson’s research, based around such testimonials, has come to the conclusion that underground electronic music culture is more usefully viewed as a form of modern religion. According to Hudson, the futuristic or idealised primitive aesthetics of and philosophies behind many of these communities is inherently political, in that it represents a rejection of current forms of economic and societal organisation.

Similarly, Graham St John, Author of Off Road Show: Techno, Protest and Feral Theatre discusses the psychedelic trance scene in Australia as a new generation ‘groovement’ that employs new technologies and tactics to engage in ‘playful politics’. He uses the late 1990s ‘Ohms-not-bombs’ vegetable oil powered touring techno bus as an example of how this community was able to engage with indigenous politics, and present alternative ways of thinking to the public. One of the Ohms-not-Bombs organisers, Peter Strong, described the travelling dance party as ‘a united response to the governments continued assault on the environment, on youth, the unions, and the traditional aboriginal people of this country’. His sentiments are echoed by many organisers within underground electronic music communities worldwide. Making the decision to exist outside of the normal regulatory and commercial framework can be seen to be indicative of a wider rejection of the increased commercialisation and legal control of electronic music since the 1990s.

In response to a 1993 article that dramatised and idealised the Toronto Rave scene, one raver exclaimed ‘If you’re there to have a good time, that’s fine. If you’re there to have a spiritual experience, that’s fine too. But raving is not ONE THING ’. She makes a fair point. It is an underestimation of the complexity of underground electronic music communities to assume that each participant shares the same values and experience, even if the organiser is politically motivated. But what she may have missed is that in a society where experience is controlled through regulatory and social norms, creating a community that is exists outside of that and is able to be more than ‘ONE THING’ to each participant is in itself a political move, whether intentional or inadvertent.