Genre rockist beef (again)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Crikey, dance music beef is sprawling over the blogosphere following Todd Burns's dissection of Justice & Simian Mobile Disco fans over at Village Voice (thanks to Fluxblog for the link). Here's Idolator's view on the subject. All these articles I've linked to bring up reasonable points. HOWEVER there still seems to be this awful mindset that you are only allowed to like certain types of dance music (or rock music), and if so you can't like the 'opposite' type. And then there's the 'oh but it's all POP anyway so ya boo sucks' business. This irritates me in a way I can't really put my finger on, so I drew a Venn diagram to help me work it out:



The diagram above covers the genres I'm interested in ('everything else' I just don't know enough about to appreciate properly).

The yellow 'rock' part covers stuff like prog, indie and metal.
The green part would probably include Bon Jovi, Kelly Clarkson and My Chemical Romance.
The pink 'dance' part covers stuff like techno, electronica, drum-n-bass, all stuff you'd buy off Juno.
The purple bit would be Booty Luv, Kylie and Roisin Murphy.
The blue (un-named as I couldn't fit the text in on my crappy version of Paint) parts would be mum-pop ballads on one side, and hip-hop/RnB on the other, I guess. These could obv have extra crossover circles of their own, but I'm sticking to 'rock' and 'dance' here to keep things simple.

And of course, 'X' stands for 'Xenomania'. Clearly this is the awesomest section.

The articles I link to above seem intent on putting Justice and Simian Mobile Disco in the green or pink sections for better or worse, when I think they're obviously part of X. It's a difficult category to do well in, and a lot of the time it doesn't produce great results. But it can be WONDERFUL as we poptimists know. The ideal song in X would be one where you don't even notice the guitars or the bleeps, but they're still there (the song I have in mind right now is 'Something Kinda Oooh').

I sympathise with Burns in his dislike of dancing to Justice/Simian, because I prefer *to dance* to pounding 4x4 beats that build up and drop out and that you don't need to know the words to enjoy - getting your head down and grinding away for hours rather than having to 'sit the next one out'. But I would also therefore dismiss a whole bunch of stuff in the pink section (I can't really dance to breaks, for example). That doesn't mean it shouldn't be there! Or that other people aren't allowed to find it good!

But the real advantage of having X present in your genre-list is that rockism should be meaningless here. There are influences from every direction, and people who complain about their precious rock/dance being 'infected' by other stuff will be waylaid in the purple and green sections. Although after reading Burns' essay I get the impression he's doing his best to remove X altogether and make everywhere a battlefield. Sadface.

Comments

[pot80.livejournal.com]

Also, and this is kinda the thing I hate about the Burns essay, I think this prescriptive attitude towards danceable music is really bizarre and uptight -- "dance music sounds like this, and you do this to it, in this specific context." The Justice record is a pop record, and for the most part, any dancing that happens to it is less geared towards dance floors and more focused on moments in life -- you move a little bit while listening to it on the subway platform, you walk a little faster down the street, you dance unselfconsciously in your room, or at a party. It's more about spontaneous movement, which I think it more exciting.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Aargh formalism ISN'T prescriptive though - it's not that dance music HAS to be like X, it's that X is exactly what makes it dance music (and not just dance music: dance culture, dance values, the dance world). If you take away X (and I'd argue that a huge X in dance music is, you know, being geared towards dancefloors) you're obnoxiously saying that dance music is worthless.

[pot80.livejournal.com]

See, I feel like the very term "dance music" is the problem -- it's a term that tries to own and occupy a very basic human response to music in general! I mean, let's be really really real about something: Only a minority of people actually dance to Dance Music. Most people actually dance to pop, rock, hip hop, country, soul, oldies, etc.

All I want to say is that "dance music" -- electronic music aimed at a particular Euro-centric context -- is just another kind of music, and you can dance to it, but a lot of people won't.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

No, this isn't the case, dance music isn't trying to 'claim' all music which people dance to, it's the name of a genre, just like r&b isn't trying to claim all music with rhythm and/or blues. The trouble with the Justice hype is that it has tried to insert them into this genre when what their music does is deliberately go against the genre.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

I agree with this entirely.

HOWEVER, IME, the average Justice fan is an indiest who likes them for the hooks and the energy, not because they 'do dance better'. I think you are being a bit unfair in mapping the attitudes of some critics onto the people who actually buy the records.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Where did DRILL AND BASS fit in to this "it doesn't work as dance music because it abandons the concept of the groove" argument? I sort of agree with that argument (more in relation to Justice than SMD really) and it was what used to annoy me about eg Squarepusher. On the other hand I'm taking on good faith what Gareth said about drill and bass nights in the 90s really going off.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

There was much hoo-hah abt this at the time, IIRC. Drill-and-bass fans intersection with fans of other dance music also rather small, maybe.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't the average indiest also think that Justice 'do dance better' precisely because of their cack-handed, unsubtle "hooks and energy"?

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

But I see no evidence that they actually think that, at least not to the level of saying 'this is proper dance music, unlike all that other rubbish stuff'.

MORNINGTON CRESCENT!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

in the same way "we" didn't suggest baggy or big beat were in anyway Proper Dance Music.

i think, in a very real sense, what i'm trying to say here, is that there's ALWAYS been a dance element to our indie music...

Re: MORNINGTON CRESCENT!

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Doesn't make Justice or Big Beat any less rubbish tho.