The Resilience of Musical Expression
Tired, but wide awake. It’s as if I should be doing something - but exactly what? I’m unsure. As life was suddenly catapulted into restriction, many blossomed in their creative endeavours - outward expressions of inner thoughts were now given time - nurtured and cultivated. Living with this unfamiliarity creates powerful feelings and provides some of the raw ingredients for new creative outputs. So I ask the question: What is the link between unique social circumstances and extraordinary musical expressions?
For dance music, the relationship is a positive one.
Picture Detroit in the late 1980’s - two things were clear - steady economic decline and a lack of outlets for young people. A city now often described as a ghost town, with a population that’s fallen 60% since 1950, was the source of one of the most prominent musical expressions of the late 20th century. An industrial legacy loomed over the city and “this industrial influence and degradation of the city was expressed in the music” (Carl Craig Detroit The Blueprint for Techno). Godheads of the genre like Jeff Mills, Juan Atkins and Derrick May would go on to start a revolution here with other founding fathers alike. From this drab environment was born a unique expression that still serves as a cornerstone of electronic music today.
Picture London council estates in the 1990’s. Pirate radio had been gaining motion since the 1960’s when offshore Radio stations like Radio Caroline would marine beyond UK territory and stream without license. As social housing was replaced by taller apartment blocks in the 60’s and 70’s, most pirate radio stations found their new home atop these council built towers, made for the working class people. Opportunities in these areas remained lower than average - but cultural expression was in plentiful supply. Thanks to stations like Pulse FM and Kool FM (among many others), non-commercial music got more airtime as they flaunted the novel sounds of Jungle and Drum n’ Bass and later - Garage, Dubstep and Grime. DJ Slimzee (co-founder of Rinse FM) even received a court order that banned him from all rooftops in his borough due to his excessive pirate radio activity. The genres played on pirate radio from unsigned artists, often born out of these very communities, directly helped mould the distinguished UK rave sound of the 1990’s. These areas of typically higher unemployment and lower income once again found themselves at the burning heart of a prominent musical expression.
Picture Berlin in 1989, the segregation of the city is symbolically dismantled and what followed for years to come was unified energy; embodied in music and dance. People of the same nationality were made to feel like citizens of different worlds by the Berlin wall. Families and friends were isolated and often forbidden from seeing each other. For young and old alike, there was a cavernous hole in the place where solidarity should have been, a distance that isolated cultures and legally forced people apart. When at long last, the wall came down, availability of industrial space and reduced police presence in many areas meant parties went on for days and previously divided people could finally be one. The years of segregation and isolation demanded a new sense of unity. This union through dance lives on in Berlin, and has done now for longer than the wall was in use.
Today, unemployment, isolation and social segregation beckon on a horizon that spans the whole globe. During this most peculiar and daunting period, the potential for creative expression is uniquely high and after the looming dusk of this pandemic fades into night and the sun rises fresh on a new society, the thirst for community will need to be quenched. The expression of our regained freedom will course through the body of each and every one of us, in what I can only expect will be an ecstatic dance; a dance of new life.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/us/23detroit.html?_r=1
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/asbo-bars-pirate-dj-from-the-rooftops-7173468.html
https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/34394/1/pirate-radio-history-and-future
Image:
Simone Burstall - Punching the Light
https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/simon-burstall-rave-photography-punching-the-light/