ESSAY: My Attempts to Understand Dance Culture.
Paul Chui
What follows is the first draft of a short piece (about 1200 words) on
contemporary dance culture. It stems from my interest in `industrial' and
its noticable absence from the `electronic scene'. Consider yourselves my
test audience.
I welcome, in fact invite, comments (that don't include the phrase `you
suck') for as I mention, I ask more questions that give answers.
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TWO CONVERSATIONS
I begin with a pair of anecdotes that loosely outline the fundamental
issues of electronic and dance culture that I discuss. Both stem from
conversations with a close friend and peer who, unlike I has found dance
culture to be artistically, intellectuall y, and spiritually satisfying.
During a telephone conversation the topic turned once again to music. I
like to relax to Jazz. He suggested the Orb and ambient music. "I need
something with more of an edge," was my reply. Such is the case for me
when electronic music is concerned. " Aren't you over that yet?", he said
referring to my sometime dystopic outlook and bourgeois angst.
What was he saying to me? Was he suggesting that my cynicism was juvenile
and unwarranted past my undergrad years? Is to continue in an
oppositional stance counterproductive to my life and practice. It was
something I had seen and heard a great deal over the past few years.
There is no underground. Hippies become yuppies. Art is dead. Anything
goes. There aren't anymore rules for us to break.
The second recount is of a meeting days later. He was showing his `rave'
photos to a local Asian Cultural organizer. One of her first questions was
what he thought of rave culture consisting mostly of `white suburban
kids'. He paused as if it had never
occurred to him. Indeed it hadn't. He didn't see it that way. His perception was that it was the ultimate collectivist subculture of contemporary Western Culture. A model for the society to follow.
THE END OF OPPOSITION
Had the revolutionary fervor of the modernist movement died twenty years
ago? Thirty or even forty years ago? Perhaps it was flawed from the
beginning. In one sense, the Western cultural production has achieved
what it had set out to do. One time offens ive and outrageous art has
become acceptable and even commonplace. Without rules governing what is
good or bad art, anything can be enjoyed without question to whether it
`challenges the status quo'.
On the other hand, culture can be seen as worse than ever. Widespread
acceptance certainly takes the steam out of rebellion. The art is
accepted, but are the values expressed accepted? We are now living what
some might call a democratic capitalist utop ia. If you wish, you may
call it a dystopia, still highly stratified and segmented. Is that just
the way things will always be or do we need to resist more that ever our
rabid consumerism, bourgeois philistimism, and escapist tendencies. And I
do say all of us despite what some may think of themselves.
THE TOYS
Upon the threshold of the electroinic era, it was said that personal
computers would revolutionize the way we work. Similarily, electronic
musical instruments were to revolutionize music. `A traditional
instrument can only sound like itself but a synthe sizer can sound like
any instrument.' As with all technology, people were hesitant but the
potential was staggering. With a synth anyone could mimic any instument,
even instruments they couldn't play. A multitude of instruments weren't
necessary becaus e they were all in this box. Compositions could be
created, unhindered by the physical limitations of `real' players.
True to form, technological paradigms seldom live up to their
expectations. No matter how you process a guitar it still sounds like a
guitar, they say. Guess what, no matter how much you process a synth or
how unreal you make your noises it still sound s like a synth. Imitate
`real' instuments? Ironically, the simplest of acoustic instruments are
the most difficult to `synthesize' convincingly. On the matter of
composition, a synth should allow anyone, that is non-musicians, to create
music without t raditional schooling in it. But my case in point:
contemporary Dance and Elctronic music. Another `guess what': they sound
like non-musicians. A monotonous 4/4 and mind-numbing repetition is
commomplace and nary given a second thought. Given the right
context such a methodology could prove critical and deconstructive:
anti-music. A criticallity is grlaringly absent in the music of which I
speak. The goal is not to prod but to comfort and console; to escape in
the name of mind expansion.
Noticably absent in the bulk of electronic music along with the
`rebellion' is a practice that embodies its Modernist and Dadaist roots.
It's goal was not be complacent or to stagnate. But, as I stated above,
it may be juvenile to continue when all boun daries have fallen. The
sought-after universal language may have already been achieved in dance
music.
POP-CULTURE SPIRITUALISM AND THE MYTH OF THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY
In indigenous peoples and traditional collectivist societies the `cult of
the individual' has never had presence like it has in the West. Producers
of culture don't own their work and there are no `atists' or `geniuses'.
The community owns it. It's part of their heitage and there is no need to
`push the envelope' or `challenge the status quo'.
Spiritualism and communitarianism make up much of the lexicon of dance
culture. The rave represents a gathering for the purpose of spiritual
awakening and mind expansion. Superficial paralles can be drawn between
`tribal rituals' and the rave. The gath ering of the community, the
dancing, the repetitive music, and the use of substances are points at
which they coincide.
To delve deeper is to see a definite patern of twentieth-century Western
culture: the recycled language of Disco, hippie-like `mind-expansion' and
collectivism, and white suburban kids rebelling without a cause. Is
dance-culture any less a trend for th is generation than trends for
previous generations?
The scenario: middle-class white teenagers reaching outside of the suburbs
to `African' culture in an attempt to escape the frustration and boredom
of their own lives. Remember Gangsta' Rap? Bongo drums? Elvis Presley?
How many wish they didn't?
Yet another: Free to be yourself amongst like-minded individuals.
Concerted effort to adorn (homogeneously) outrageous clothing to express
your `true self' without societies constrictions prove to be fruitlessly
pretentious. Open-minded? Has anyone eve r read a U.K rag or dance music
`zine? Is the idolization of Disc Jockeys a parallel for Shamanism? Why
try to differentiate yourself with increasingly ridiculous names on par
with those of Alternabands if there is no self-serving individualism.
Is one to believe that the music is universal? Is it really some cultural
juggernaut that will leave no corner of this Earth untouched? The fact of
the matter is that the idea of a universal language has always been and
will always be an ethnocentric one ; a Eurocentric one at that. Any
reasons for non-white understanding of dance is the result of no more than
European influence and subsequent absorption. The juggernaut is Wester
Culture; IT is what willl not stop until every crack on this Earth is
fille d. The universiality here is the same that is possesed by Coca-Cola
and Mickey Mouse.
I CONCLUDE (abruptly. First draft remember...)
I leave with one more question: are they disciples of a new spiritual and
intellectual paradigm or another generation of white suburbanites
searching for yet another distraction?
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Paul Chui
pc...@unixg.ubc.ca