I purposefully didn't mentioned anything above on the Space Afrocentrism, the Aztec cultural references or the political content of some of the older Detroit releases. It needs a lot of space to talk about that. Also, racial discrimination is something I hate and try to avoid at all costs. But I will lay my shields down for a bit and ask: isn't it strange that most if not all of the 1988-1995 Detroit artists were Afroamerican or Hispanic (they were not called that way back then...), when most if not all today's neo-Detroit heroes are white?
And if one is to map the various ways techno has changed over the past decade and a half, you're closer to finding out why with that observation than you would be by simply noting that a lot of the music sounds differently now. No music is created in a vacuum. It's at once an expression of creativity and taste. As such, musicians are as much defined by what they listen to, like, and are influenced by as they are by their level of skill and compositional imagination. An entire genre of music was created by marrying the instrumental and technological components of Kraftwerk to the stylistic underpinnings of Parliament. The significance of ethno-cultural divergences becomes clearer when you realize that the ability to reproduce the style diminishes if it's taken up by people who don't know what Parliament sounds like.
I'm not going to call the emerging crop of "neo-Detroit heroes" posers, wannabes or whatever; just as I'm not going to call their boosters "sell-outs" or "liars". As Juan Atkins said after he bemoaned the R&B system, techno never came with a series of strictly heeded rules that measure its authenticity and I think it was wise to maintain that stylistic posture. But the looming constant with a good portion of "neo-Detroit" techno artists is that they were more influenced by the sound of Detroit techno than the style. When people who weren't informed by the Motown musical context processed the music, they didn't hear the callbacks to funk and soul. They heard the latent futurism, the pervasive synths, the robotically distorted vocals, the artificial bass and drum loops, the electronic chords, etc and tailored their sound with those qualities as a foundation for dub-centered influences. And that's fine.
People will inevitably play what they know and can't be expected to mimic and mine what they don't. But there's a dynamic here that I don't find entirely explicable by saying "Well, techno is Euro-centric now so its influences are Euro-centric". Like Nightlight's formulation, it's too passive, too indirect and it makes a portrait of substantive dominance seem like it was reached unconsciously and at random. There's an appeal to thinking that. One that lets you maintain positive assumptions about people, deals and companies you don't know the inner workings of; but on its face, there are two problems. The first is that it's deceptively convenient, and the second is that it doesn't make any sense. Buying that premise requires buying that a thriving genre of American, regionally inspired, ethnically centered music just stopped developing and being developed once its reach expanded beyond one American city. Mad Mike has another theory:
Techno & House struggle today because in the late 80′s when the U.K. discovered it? Many brothers believed that this “discovery” would help them in the US markets they were having some moderate “underground” success in. They believed that with The U.K. and Europe’s support this would give them the same promotional budgets Rap artists were getting here from Major labels in the states and that they would be able to “Make it Big” and eventually be signed to a major record label. Due to well documented historical reasons me and Jeff were skeptical.Dumb business decisions will always be the fault of the people who make them. But let's not insult the intelligence of record labels - who saw an opportunity and successfully capitalized on it - by implying that their success was unintentional. We're in a world where wide swaths of America can hear the term "Detroit techno" and reasonably go "huh?"; we're in a world where techno is predominately defined as European club/minimal music and where its niche is sufficiently small and foreign enough to forget-to-the-point-of-losing its once-obvious American associations and origins. To paint this as anything but a success from the standpoint of those who talent-spotted and eventually co-opted Detroit's music and artists is an understatement that borders on dishonesty. Techno's international origins are founded on something that was not-quite-but-bordering-thievery, and given the ignorance or apathy of the people who played along with that, I'm willing to say fair's fair and call that "fine". People jumped into a fire they didn't know was hot and should have known better, etc, etc. But can we have just a little bit of honesty here?
Unfortunately what they didn’t know was that European Record Companies not only lacked the interest but they also lacked the muscle and experience to compete in the urban US market. So consequently companies who for a few thousand dollars would license the music with “WORLD RIGHTS” chose to not even try selling into our communities and still don’t to this day.
Instead they repackaged the shit and sold hundreds of thousands of records into the U.K. & Europe only! An easy sell market we had already established! Totally neglecting the states! Of course the artists and DJ’s were financially benefited by increased demands for their performances across Europe and some as individuals have done well. But the dream of electrifying the inner city with hi-tech, sci-fi thoughts and dreams was negated and we haven’t recovered since.
There has never been any attempt by any of Detroits European licensors over the whole 20 year period to secure ANY radio time from a major station here in Detroit! Not even for Ritchie Hawtin!
I have often been accused of being difficult with European Record Companies as being racist or not liking white people. The truth is I would simply ask for something that would give back to our community from these people. A simple reciporical deal … something like for small companies a donation to a local charity or something. Maybe for a bigger company I would ask for US distribution and promotion of this music in urban communities and college radio. Some made the donations but all too often I would be faced with a common European question: “Those people don’t listen to Techno Music they only listen to Rap don’t they?” It was and is still one of the most difficult aspects of making this music. It’s as if we are smart enough to make this music but too fucking dumb to listen to it.
Hip Hop never abandoned its original audience. It spoke to the hood first and it stays in the hood and expanded outward later which is beautiful! Detroit Techno and Chicago House never had time to root themselves as deeply into all the US cities. They were diverted to Europe at the height of their inner city influence. I can distinctly remember on Jeff Mills “WJLB Wizard Show” all three of those musics existed side by side. A style still carried on by Detroits mixshow jocks and Cabaret DJ’s to this day.
Many other factors also contributed. Booking agencies had a big hand in the transformation of this music! As more and more of our most talented PRODUCERS left Detroit to DJ abroad for the big money being offered. Less and less records were being produced. More and more was being learned about how to produce the sounds, beats and rhythms of techno first hand as many naive and friendly producers displayed their craft at clubs, studios and magazines to future competition that would soon coin them “Old School” or collaborate with them in hopes of jump starting their own careers. Booking Agency’s with no concern for these producers record labels musical output or their employee’s often booked these guys one year in advance! Leaving them “zero” time to produce music and more time for the world to catch up and study Detroit. Very few other than Jeff Mills, Ritchie Hawtin and Carl Craig have demonstrated the discipline for such schedules! And I know all three of those guys and they run the show … not the agents!
And to be fair you can’t just blame the agencies there was a tremendous lack of insight on behalf of a lot of the producers and artists for allowing themselves to be manipulated this way. For me its especially painful to see people who are Sonic Pioneers reduced to mere entertainers and now struggling to survive waiting for some agent to send them a check when they used to write their own!
The lesson is: Detroit and Urban America’s loss was the world’s gain.
The gradual transformation of techno from what it was into what it is isn't an expansion or exploration of the sound, it's not an evolution or polishing of the genre: it's whitewashing. It's taking a genre steeped in a rich musical heritage and wringing that heritage until all that's left is the sponge. If techno's international origins are a product of pseudo-theft, then its adaptation to modern prominence is a function of deliberately ripping the sound from the style. And why not? Neither Americans or inner city neighborhoods - where the influences would be most obvious - were target demographics. By centering the sound in Europe and marketing it to Europeans, the requirement to be guided by something more than Electronic Futuristic Instruments and an occasional pounding bass disappeared. The music no longer had to speak to an audience connected to the musical experience of American minorities, nor did it have that ingrained cultural backdrop to speak against. And in response, the demands of profit - which usually coincides with a requirement for accessibility - formed a new creature: a techno with no obligation to the things that made techno potentially ostracizing and risky.
How do you market music that revolves around a fringe American experience to non-Americans? And how do you reproduce their inspirations without constantly and expensively shipping artists out of Detroit? Europe's answer to both of these questions was - by and large - pretty simple: you don't. When, inevitably, the labels' Euro-centric focus began to give birth to a crop of Non-American musicians sufficiently influenced and even partially schooled in the "Detroit sound", they not only had fertile ground to make and perpetuate an audience, but they had a pretext to form musical expectations wholly detached from Detroit's actual influences. That perfect storm didn't just make way for influential copycats. It made it possible for the knock-off to become the standard. And since techno didn't really grow anywhere else and since Detroit artists were getting their butter breaded overseas, who was really around to say "wait, wait, hold up"?
Techno's renovation was an extended and successful effort to make it more broadly marketable to the established audience. The steady influx of white, non-American faces to a black-created genre is little more than a symptom that marks the extent of that success. And as I said, that's fine. It's the name of a game that Detroit (and America generally) lost. I simply have one request: let's stop tap-dancing around it, denying it and getting defensive when it's brought up. When people say something's changed or something's different about the music, they're not describing a condition, they're avoiding description. What's true coincides with what many seem unwilling to say: something's missing. And it's not gone because everyone grew out of it, it's not gone because its creative potential has been stripped, it's not even gone because people dislike it. It's gone because it was taken. That may not be obvious now, but when the remnants of Detroit's first and second wave of talent dries up, all that will be left are memories of a sound with the only successors to it being self-anointed. But hey, at least Europeans can get European records printed at Archer Record Pressing and say it was made in Detroit. That's basically the same thing, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment