Joel
On Dec 14, 2010, at 8:24 AM, Hein Marais wrote:
> Adrian,
>
> Thought you'd be interested in this -- tail-end of a thread on the music systems at London protests -- and I'd be interested in your take. Trigger was a piece by BBC' Paul Mason, on his BBC blog, which led to some cutting analysis. Fisher (Wire editor of old, if I remember correctly) as always is especially trenchant.
>
> Hope you're well otherwise.
>
> H
>
>
> On 14 Dec 2010, at 12:00 AM, Mike Beggs wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 3:25 AM, Hein Marais <hein at marais.as> wrote:
>>> Though the one comment right at the bottom seems to have the best last word:
>>>
>>> Domuseswords said...
>>> There were loads of sound systems all over the shop, and I heard loads of
>>> dubstep that day. And at other protests recently. Althrough rather than
>>> dubstep the thing I heard most was a lot of bate jumpup DnB.
>>>
>>> Listen, let's not over simplify things here: what's special about this
>>> movement is that it emcompases all of the contradictions and aesthetics of
>>> our generation as a whole. It's anarchy of the gleeks and the grime'eads.
>>
>> Mark Fisher has some comments on this in his protest diary, which is
>> well worth reading in full, of course it goes beyond the music:
>>
>> http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011750.html
>>
>> "Day X3, December 9th. There's long been a discrepancy between culture
>> and the post-crash situation. It's now evident that the New Fifties
>> are over - the scenery still survives, but you can push your fingers
>> through it. Paul Mason talks of a "dubstep rebellion", and, although
>> it would be churlish to complain about Mason's report, given that he
>> was one of the very few mainstream media commentators to properly
>> engage with the movement, Dan Hancox is surely right: it wasn't
>> dubstep that was being played last Thursday but "rnb, bashment, road
>> rap, american hiphop and - albeit only once or twice - grime". What's
>> striking here is the lack of any political content, or even - "Pow"
>> excepted - much anger in the music that was played. What we can hear
>> exemplified, in fact, is the disengagement from politics that Jeremy
>> Gilbert has persuasively argued was typical of the 90s hardcore
>> continuum: "given the social and political radicalism characterising
>> most of their immediate antecedents (acid house, with its origins in
>> the black gay clubs of Chicago; hip-hop, only recently having left its
>> 'golden age' of political consciousness; reggae, with its history of
>> anti-capitalism and anti-racism), as well as the traditional
>> radicalism of their core constituency - the multiracial poor of urban
>> London - the music scenes of the 'nuum' were notable for their
>> detachment from any kind of politics, their embrace of competitive
>> entrepreneurial values, and their defence of masculinist and
>> heterosexist norms which other dance cultures were busily and visibly
>> deconstructing at just that moment." What we've grown accustomed to is
>> a split between leftist political commitments and the most vibrant,
>> experimental dance musics. No doubt this is an aspect of capitalist
>> realism, and it's no accident that I referred to Simon's 1996 piece on
>> hardstep in Capitalist Realism...
>>
>> "At DayX1 I heard the predictable "Killing In The Name" and the even
>> more predictable "Sound Of The Police", alongside The Beatles,
>> Madness, and - depressingly - The Libertines --- and, most jarringly,
>> "Another Brick In The Wall" (hearing "we don't need no education" as
>> we shuffled out of the kettle made for a suitably incongruous
>> experience).
>>
>> "But this video that Jeremy shot on Thursday suggests a possible
>> convergence between post-nuum musics and politics. It is my belief
>> that the UK music culture of the next decade will emerge from the stew
>> of sound and affect in the kettles these past few weeks. Paul Mason
>> dismissed the idea that the demo was exclusively populated by
>> "Lacan-reading hipsters from Spitalfields" - but of course (we)
>> Lacan-reading hipsters were also there, alongside the "bainlieue-style
>> youth from Croydon, Peckam, the council estates of Islington". In
>> other words, this brought together working class culture and bohemia
>> in something like the same way that art schools - so crucial to UK
>> pop-art culture since the 50s - used to. But - with very good reasons
>> from its own point of view - neoliberal policy has been hostile to
>> this proletarian-bohemian cultural circuit. While Further Education
>> and the new universities have precisely tried to make theory such as
>> Lacan available to the working class - while also trying to engage
>> with everything vibrant coming out of working class culture - the
>> policy has been to re-cement rigid class and cultural distinctions:
>> philosophy for the bourgeoisie; "vocational" courses for the masses."
>>
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