The Gentrification of Culture

william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
shakahislop said:
his music does sound posh. it fits in that massive attack niche. they were mostly posh weren't they. xx's schoolmate four tet's music sounds a bit posh as well for that matter. burial is arguable, because i loved his music so much and my vision is cloudy, but he probably overall does have a .......actually writing this probably the most interesting thing is that the three of them (xx four tet burial) all went to the same school and presumably all grew up in putney and all put out music that audience-wise and to some extent sonically is pretty similar. i don't know anything about any of those lads' lives.
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I'm conflicted 'cos I want to hate on jamie xx ( worst DJ I've ever seen ), but 'cos he went to same school as Burial I'm confused now...

but, full disclosure, a couple of the best parties I've ever been to have been hosted by the space cadet division of Eton lads
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I feel bad now I'm not looking to hate on anyone who happened to be born posh – after all, I am in many ways an extremely privileged person myself

It is interesting to consider what effect being upper-middle class might have on your musical influences – a cursory glance at some of the names mentioned in these threads reveals that quite a few of them had parents who were muscians and were influenced by classical music as well as dance music

And again, C'Est Moi, since I was learning to play Chopin pieces at the same time as I discovered Wu Tang Clan and jungle

There's so little money in music these days (if there ever was) that the chances are that you'd need to be pretty middle class at least to support pursuing a career in it.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Corpsey said:
It is interesting to consider what effect being upper-middle class might have on your musical influences – a cursory glance at some of the names mentioned in these threads reveals that quite a few of them had parents who were musicians and were influenced by classical music as well as dance music
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Like Burial for example was obviously influenced hugely by garage and jungle etc but the melancholy/Romantic harmonies in his music ties it to more of a middle class indie world (ditto james blake, jamie xx etc.)
 
pattycakes_

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Man this should've been a megathread still going to this day. No wonder I barely put any effort in. Pearls before swine.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I think Op is a pretty good description of what happened in the downtown lit scene the last 5 years
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I think there is another way of telling some of the story's parts. "The rich & powerful infiltrate the walled garden" is probably more accurately "the rich and powerful are let into the garden by insiders who think it's in their interest"

I also think that the rich & powerful have outsized control of the means of (1) publicizing & publicly framing (2) commemorating and canonizing. Such that they're not just co-opting the scene but also "creating" (in terms of contemporary & retroactive projection) it (as an image, a story).
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
i've been digging into some of the writing and podcasts about 'rave' in the US (a book that @blissblogger recommended which covers the history, and a couple of podcasts where they interview people from what they relentlessly refer to as 'the scene'). it has a really different flavour to like listening to the d&b djs on killa kella in that it feels thoroughly and relentlessly middle class. it's been pretty interesting. the one i was just listening to (a podcast called Rave To The Grave) had an interview with a dj called The Librarian. not picking on her because it's all been like that, she's just the one i listened to this afternoon, but so many of them are ex indie rockers who have all been to university and so on, i mean she talks about how she got into rave while she was spending her college vacations skiing in Whistler, getting into Skream and Warrior Queen, and now she's the running a festival somewhere on the Canadian west coast.

the ex-indie rocker thing and the class thing are obviously linked. can't remember if i've written this somewhere on here before, there is a flourishing of clubs in brooklyn and queens over the past five years, apart from the techno one run by a georgian (ie tblisi georgian) all of the good ones were set up by people who started by running illegal ones in brooklyn in the 2000s when i think a lot of what was going on was the brooklyn indie rock hipster thing of the time, who have ended up getting into beats instead and have taken advantage of a relaxation in the laws to set up legal clubs. i think this is the case for elsewhere, knockdown center, nowadays to some extent, market hotel was an illegal place and is now legal, i think house of yes has more or less the same background. obviously i don't know the full biography of everyone but this is the general trajectory and when they're interviewed loads of the djs and so on say they started out being interested in indie and like the chemical brothers and massive attack.

i reckon there's a lot more normal people dna in the uk version of all of this
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
It is interesting to consider what effect being upper-middle class might have on your musical influences – a cursory glance at some of the names mentioned in these threads reveals that quite a few of them had parents who were muscians and were influenced by classical music as well as dance music
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was noticeable being a teenager how differently people who played an instrument would do it depending on if they'd had lessons or not. people who went through the school system where there's formal grades ('he plays grade 8 clarinet) have such a different way of thinking about it then people who got their brother to show them chords or figured it out themselves. it must be an almost irreversible experience if you do it when you're a child. sometimes i think that is almost the specific contour that my own taste divides down, the formally trained vs the pop work it out yourself sensibility
 
sus

sus

Moderator
There is something almost effete about raving in New York. America's heartland and provinces experience techno/rave almost exclusively via cruise ship dockings.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
sus said:
It's a european import, like how only middle class Americans watch soccer
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it's hard to untangle the sequence of events for me. coz of course you have the origins of house and techno being american. and outside the numm i'd see them as the ur-source. probably most people on here have a better understanding of all of this than me, i've never been interested enough in early house or techno to read much about it.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
shakahislop said:
it's hard to untangle the sequence of events for me. coz of course you have the origins of house and techno being american. and outside the numm i'd see them as the ur-source. probably most people on here have a better understanding of all of this than me, i've never been interested enough in early house or techno to read much about it.
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I don't understand it either I'm just speaking from my short and provincial lived experience
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
Raving doesn’t really make sense when you have all that space. It takes congested, desperate circumstances to give cause for an abandonment of inhibition like that
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
sus said:
There is something almost effete about raving in New York. America's heartland and provinces experience techno/rave almost exclusively via cruise ship dockings.
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i've always assumed that there might / must be messier stuff that is more word of mouth. in the clubs i go to it never gets lary. but people are not that boozy. the one big downside of nowadays is the crowd. it's fine when you're on the floor in the dark. but it is far far far too cool and dressed up. there is something about that place where they are trying hard to make it pleasant, comfortable and unintimidating

the pretty great dj booking, the soundsystem, the prices, the no phones on the dancefloor thing, being able to take a break in a quiet hammock, make up for the downsides comprehensively. but probably it's not gnarly enough. all these things are linked
 
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