{"id":137,"date":"2007-09-27T14:47:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-27T11:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freshgoodminimal.ro\/?p=137"},"modified":"2008-10-04T01:59:39","modified_gmt":"2008-10-03T22:59:39","slug":"blogspotting-aging-and-techno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freshgoodminimal.ro\/?p=137","title":{"rendered":"Blogspotting: Aging and Techno"},"content":{"rendered":"

from infinitestatemachine.com<\/a><\/p>\n

first issue:<\/p>\n

“As a man (and a father) in my 30s, I constantly ask myself why this music (yeah, techno\/house\/electro, that\u2019s what I\u2019m talking about) is still relevant (to me). Now, I\u2019m being completely subjective here, but as I\u2019ve followed the path that normal society expects me to take (career, relationship, house, kids), where does my love of deep electronic music fit in, especially as the majority of my peers have left this shit behind, and its importance seems less and less significant?
\n[…]
\nBut back to house\/techno and how it is perceived in society. In this city (Dublin, Ireland), you go to a club and the average is under 25 (it seems that way to an individual edging ever closer to middle age). But in Berlin, for example, that age demographic is radically different. The city is<\/em> techno. Someone in their 30s does not feel out of place (a darn good feeling), because the music is ingrained in the culture. It\u2019s given much greater credence and respect – it has legitimacy, something that it seriously lacks in Ireland and, to a certain extent, the UK (even after all these years). It has certain connotations – it\u2019s drug music, it\u2019s simply boom-tsk-boom-tsk, it has no perminancy, it\u2019s not even music – that\u2019s what some of the detractors say (okay, my dad). Well, they\u2019re wrong – this culture has legitimacy and, hopefully, is not ageist (heck, most of the top djs and producers are middle-aged, why not the fans?). I\u2019m gonna stick with it, even if I embarrass my kids with my dancing. They can have their R&B (when I think of that term, I think James Brown, not Usher) and I\u2019ll keep my Surgeon (still the man). I may lose my dignity, but I guess that\u2019s the price I\u2019ll have to pay.”<\/p>\n

second issue (from an answer of some guy):<\/p>\n

“Dance music is not legitimate because it critiques certain assumptions about art and ultimately about the self that you find in the Anglo-American perspective.
\nThe most important of these is the rejection of the indivisible self
\n[…]
\nSo dance music is the music of the decentered self, and this gives rise to the \u201cdisposable\u201d nature. I put disposable in quotes because in reflects a bias toward the artifacts of music \u2014 tracks, songs or albums. Traditionally, the creation of these artifacts is considered to be the purpose of music for those that insist on an indivisible self, because they represent the artist after he has died, as in the phrase, \u201cI am listening to Mozart.\u201d It\u2019s as if the artist achieves immortality through his or her artifacts, so preserving them and identifying their original author is very important. Remixing, sampling or otherwise blurring the bright lines of authorship is seen as suspicious, and the concept of artifacts that are collectively owned, such as myths, legends and other forms of folk art is rejected. The main criteria of whether an artform is legitimate is whether it has the potential to confer \u201cimmortality\u201d on individual artists.<\/p>\n

So where traditional art is seen as generating metaphorical discrete objects, the better metaphor for dance music is ocean waves. A wave only have temporary existence, and it never exists independently of the ocean \u2014 the body of influences and cultural factors \u2014 that produced it. So dance music doesn\u2019t produce eternal artifacts that stand for artists, but a series of waves that come and go but are spiritual successors to each other. Of course, all kinds of music contain both of these metaphors, but dance music is unique in emphasizing the wave aspect and also unique in emphasizing dancing, a physical activity as opposed to a cognitive one, i.e. not viewing music logocentrically, as a kind of language or speech, but something \u201cprimitive\u201d that moves the body.<\/p>\n

Some fans attempt to \u201cnormalize\u201d dance music and downplay its critique of traditional assumptions. This is a doomed enterprise, because as many parents have said, it\u2019s bad music. And they are right. By which I mean that when we judge dance music by the normative standards that are embedded in the mainstream concept of music, it fails. It can only succeed by pointing out that there are other standards that apply, and individuals who attempt to legitimize it according to mainstream criteria are actually hurting it, because they are re-inscribing the universality of mainstream criteria instead promoting a truly alternative perspective.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from infinitestatemachine.com first issue: “As a man (and a father) in my 30s, I constantly ask myself why this music (yeah, techno\/house\/electro, that\u2019s what I\u2019m talking about) is still relevant (to me). Now, I\u2019m being completely subjective here, but as I\u2019ve followed the path that normal society expects me to take (career, relationship, house, kids), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-de-dans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshgoodminimal.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshgoodminimal.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshgoodminimal.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshgoodminimal.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshgoodminimal.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freshgoodminimal.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshgoodminimal.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshgoodminimal.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshgoodminimal.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}