June 17, 2011
Is Geography History?
Local music scenes have been crucial in the formation and development of new and original genres throughout pop music’s history, but has the influence of a strong geographical identity become irrelevant?
New York's CBGB, a home to punk and new wave
For decades, musical styles and genres have appeared from the furthest reaches of the globe and into the public consciousness. However, these forms and scenes have often been allowed years of development and fine-tuning before breaking through, mostly shaped by the culture that’s specific to the people of these places. With the advent of the internet and its fellow new media, has this crucial developmental period been removed in favour of rapid cross-pollination of styles from one end of the planet to the other? And has the web centralised the formation of new and fresh musical ideas, removing the reliance on physical location as inspirational source?
In the past, small groups of bands with no other means of communication besides the face to face were able to contain a shared sound within a small geographical area. Take the “Madchester” bands of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. It’s hard to imagine the lairy swagger of Shaun Ryder or Ian Brown’s heavily accented Mancunian slur translating easily to guitar bands of the Home Counties, following the inevitable internet hype machine that would quickly spread the sound away from its north-western roots. Without sufficient time to mature and develop its ideals, would the DC hardcore scene of the early ‘80s remained relevant long enough for its bands to spawn the “Straight Edge” movement and its DIY work ethic?
That’s not to say that the collaborative capabilities of genres formed and nurtured in the virtual world aren’t exciting and fascinating in their potential combinations – consider the recent live performance from the heavily geographically dispersed Twitter Band, or the constantly evolving world of electronic music thanks to accessible software and online sound archives. The accessibility of pre-existing genres to areas of the world that had not previously encountered them has thrown up some incredible interpretations also. But does all this mean the end for the once fundamental local scene?
The Hacienda in Manchester
Think of the world’s most famous musical cities: Nashville, the home of country & western, Berlin’s ever-evolving techno scene, the Merseybeat of Liverpool, east coast New York with its hipsters (nee folkies), west coast California and the birth and death of the hippie dream, the tangos of Buenos Aires and the clubbing paradise of Ibiza. Even the lesser known hotspots: the bustling capitals of West Africa with their respective musical traditions, 19th century waltzing Vienna, the chanters and chanteuses of Paris, and that’s not even considering the eastern end of the world.
All of these places had something about them, whether the cultural makeup of their native and immigrant peoples, socio/political climate, meteorological conditions, or just something in the water, that was meant they were able to conceive and nurture a musical style unique to that location. Without tracing the roots of meta-genres back to the beginning, it’s fairly simple to point out one or two recurring factors in the creation of a music scene.
Primarily – after establishing a general ethos (political stance, existing cultural backlash etc), consciously or otherwise – it appears that there must be hospitable venues for a scene to germinate within. Madchester had the Haçienda, punk and new wave had CBGB (ironically itself an abbreviation of country, blue grass and blues), reggae squeezed the formation of an entire genre into Studio 1, etc.
Clement "Coxsone" Dodd at the controls of Studio 1
Hip-hop has arguably one of the most easily traceable genetic lines (or at least the one traced most often), with specific dates and locations of key developmental stages within the New York borough of the Bronx available for examination. Its manifestation from the parental genres of soul, funk, and electro is clear and evidential, and, although its associated art forms sprang from – and helped to dictate – the culture of African-Americans far beyond the reaches of the Big Apple, its birthplace is indisputable.
Some scene-spawning locations may not be restricted to single venues. Fela Kuti’s Nigeria of the 1970s was a complex maze of political corruption and abuse of civil liberties; perfect for shaping his unique and oft-imitated brand of Afrobeat, whereas similar troubles in the Jamaica of the late ‘60s boosted a renewed sense of pride in heritage in groups of reggae performers (Bob Marley & The Wailers among them), leading to the “roots” strand of the genre.
However, these days scenes need not rely on location or shared political ideals. “Chillwave”, the recent internet-nurtured, reverb-laden genre du jour is, in its very nature, an LA sound: sun-bleached, airy, and awash with surf. Yet a large number of its main protagonists manage to channel this sonic aesthetic while residing far away from the beaches of Malibu and Santa Monica. This is a great example of genre transcending geographical location – chillwave as a form being one of the clearest instances of an internet blog-fuelled scene, with early forages into the production style from artists such as Animal Collective’s Panda Bear championed by tastemakers like Pitchfork and Hipster Runoff (widely believed to have coined the term “chillwave”) rather than spawning any sort of local, physical “scene”. It could now be considered a global form, with artists as wide-reaching as Barcelona’s El Guincho to Oxford’s Chad Valley embracing the genre’s manifesto, and this can only be down to its existence as an internet-based form through the promotion of blogs and forums.
Barcelona's El Guincho
Conversely, there is a modern genre that seems to have bucked the trend. Although receiving much love and attention from the virtual world, for many years the core of the dubstep scene has remained fairly insular in its south London bubble. One explanation for this could be that it was picked up by pirate radio and clubs long before the internet got a hold, and the underground London scene that was still in the throes of UK garage and grime was much more receptive to the half-time, scattergun beats and throbbing bass lines. It rapidly became a badge of geographical identity, one that the rest of the world didn’t pick up on until inevitable commercialisation much further down the line. Pitchfork launched its monthly Grime/Dubstep column in 2005, long after the heavyweight likes of Skream, Benga and Digital Mystikz had become local legends, and the slew of dubstep forums that eventually sprang up only began to snowball in number around this time. Even now the scene is heavily UK-based, radiating from Croydon to the clubs of Brighton, Nottingham and Manchester, while Bristol – not content with its own achievements in the creation of trip-hop 20 years ago – now has a claim for dubstep’s second city. This is very much an outdated template in the spreading of a scene: a localisation of a specific musical style that has remained contained within its place of birth for enough time to distinguish its sound, before being picked up on by the wider population.
David Simon and Eric Overmyer’s fantastic TV series Treme also touches on these themes by examining attempts by New Orleans inhabitants to revive the spirits of a city devastated by natural disaster through its long and prestigious musical heritage. In the wake of hurricane Katrina, with large sections of the city still sore in the structure of its buildings and the psyches of its people, tourists from around the world poured into the city, having only recently learned of the rich musical past that its natives have nurtured for decades. The New Orleans jazz and blues styles that permeate the show are prime examples of decades of scene-building, something that would have very quickly taken on a life of its own had early Professor Longhair albums leaked onto the internet before their release date. In a humorous twist of fate, one of the city’s most successful contemporary artists, the rapper Lil Wayne, owes his career outside New Orlean’s borders to the internet-generated hype surrounding his music.
Even pre-internet, not all scenes relied on physical location to grow and expand. The Britpop of the ‘90s was less a collective group of musical ideals, more a loose, media-generated term that brought together a scattered selection of bands to fight America’s musical dominance of the decade to date. Britpop had factions in both the north and south of Britain, each with its own take on the concept.
Cover of an NME Britpop edition
The centralisation of music’s geography online is not a wholly negative thing. Collaborations between artists can now be instantaneous; influences and inspiration potentially boundless, not limited to what LPs can be found in the local record shop (in themselves rapidly becoming obsolete). Bands can now exist in the musical consciousness from areas not previously associated with a strong musical tradition, giving way to weird interpretations of past genres resulting from the large panoramic view of bygone eras the internet offers.
However, there are the inevitable downsides. Local competition in smaller areas often bred better music as artists were forced to push themselves in the face challengers. Where once artists took pride in the areas that raised them – US hip-hop’s east coast/west coast divisions, Springsteen’s blue collar America, the determinedly proud French chanson of Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour et al –references to these places are now more concerned with paying dues rather than recognising the effect they had on their sound.
But this is current the state of play, and music, as with every art form, has found ways to adapt and progress in an age less reliant on physical space. The internet serves as an all-encompassing meeting point of musical minds, as well as a bizarre and often confusing time capsule of what has come before. When these two factors collide, it has the potential to create some fascinating interpretations of what music is in the 21st century.
February 1, 2011
What’s in a Name?
Newly-coined genre names have long been the subject of heated debate and disparagement amongst musicians and fans alike, and the arrival of James Blake’s hard-to-place debut has opened the floor once again. But can we get by without them…?
It’s somewhat of an understatement to say that some genre definitions can be misleading, but there is no denying they are often also useful. Essential, in fact. They help us to discover new artists based on current favourites. They categorise award ceremonies. They distinguish our musical royalty (The Godfather of Soul, The King of Pop). They used to point us in the right direction in record shops back when they still existed. True, some are cringe-inducing, almost nonsensical (chamber pop? No wave? Ritual ambient???), but others helpfully describe musicological features (thrash metal, glitch, doo wop), or have geographical or subcultural connotations (madchester, Merseybeat, surf rock, skater punk). Steve Lamacq may have had his tongue planted firmly in his cheek during his NME days when plucking ‘scenes’ such as Fraggle and Camden Lurch out of the air; sitting back chuckling to himself as the wider music media reported on their activities, but he was demonstrating the power of the rock critic at a time when grunge was restructuring music’s mainstream; much the same way as its crossover antecedents such as punk had before.
The mid’90s saw British bands turn to the nation’s forefathers of pop for inspiration (after a couple of decades cross-pollinating across the Atlantic), and the crassly-named Britpop was born. US house music was imported and pulled through the ringer of trance, acid house, breakbeat, and into 2-step and UK garage, absorbing and metamorphosing, while all the time documented and categorised by those with a need for defined demographics and target markets.
Into the ‘00s, and British electronica splinters into countless sub-genres like a single-cell amoeba – the spread of the internet speeding up mitosis significantly – until, just into the next decade, we find ourselves confronted with an organism such as the self-titled debut from James Blake. The imminent release from the forward-thinking Londoner has not only impressed the critics, but is unique enough in style to have had them frantically trying to label his sound.
The popular starting point appears to be dubstep. Well, reports are that Blake’s bass tones have been causing structural damage to venues up and down the country, and it is true that his productions do contain the airy spook of Croydon’s finest – especially the EPs CMYK and Klavierwerke. But the stylistic gap between first single Limit to Your Love and a classic of the genre such as Digital Mystikz’ Haunted – a track Blake cites as definitive in his love affair with the sound – is too wide to pair the two together under the dubstep banner. Some early alternatives have included dubpop (too misguided), soulstep (too Jamie Woon), and minimal pop (too modern kitchen layout). One thing that music journalists are reluctant to do is backtrack, which is a shame as perhaps trip-hop might be a better reference marker.
Blake is – in the literal sense – a singer-songwriter, but this vague descriptor has been claimed by introspective guitar-strumming guys and girls with a thing or two to say about love, heartbreak, and the various bland shades in between. To this day, infamous musical-chameleon Neil Young is branded with the term, despite spending a whole career constantly reinventing himself with almost every one of his numerous albums. In his BBC Sound of 2011 biography, Blake is described as “post-dubstep”, which is as useful as any suggestion so far, but the whole thing is in danger of descending into farce; a situation summed up perfectly in grime artist Wiley’s 2004 hit Wot do U call it?, in which the rapper bemoans the ambiguity bestowed upon the various underground club sounds of the time.
The former Roll Deep man wasn’t the first to feel restricted within a genre pigeonhole. Boundary-defying collective Funkadelic’s 1978 hit Who says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?! tackles the issue head-on, the self-explanatory question of the title backed up with snarling guitars over syncopated funk rhythms. Musical u-turns towards a more commercially viable style are commonplace throughout the history of pop, with recent example Plan B’s switch from hardnosed street rapper to slick soul man an indicator of the success this can bring.
Genre tags do have their upsides. Some recent categories have inspired new music instead of merely labelling it. Chillwave, the genre du jour of the last couple of years, has such a strong emotive tie to its sound (sun-bleached guitar lines, washes of lazy reverb, a Californian sensibility) that its name alone has been the basis for many a new artist’s sound. Drum n’ Bass’ arrival in the early ‘90s had such simple and structured parameters, that producers of any skill level were able to build on its blueprint.
Often though, things aren’t quite that simple. The problem is that musicians tend to have a wide variety of tastes, and the music that inspires them quite often comes from numerous corners of pop history, leading to a blurring of the edges of old genres into new ones. This may cause problems for those wishing to archive, organise, chronicle and categorise new music, but is necessary to sustain development and progress. Settling on James Blake’s place in the wider musical cannon may have caused a few headaches amongst the critics, but his music certainly hasn’t.
Essentially Eclectic 