old Mudd!  

септември 28 2006 GHOSTS IN THE TUNNEL / Grime, Dubstep, Voice

Grime dying? The patient is fevered but that's not sickness. I understand the journalistic impulse to impose a traditional anthropomorphic narrative arc (birth, growth, stability, infirmity, death) on a loose collection of artists, singles, albums, radio broadcasts, messageboard talk, producers, fans, myspace digigraffiti, music videos, etc -- but writing off grime (or giving it the usual flagrant critical silence while championing dubstep, a similar genre whose most immediate difference from grime is the lack of vocalists) ignores the fact the Wiley and a handful of other MCs are producing some of their best work and bursting out with funky, fractured subjectivity as their rhymes get tighter, weirder, more personal.

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Wiley in particular often divulges too much information, giving us an uncomfortable, wonderful amount of detail. On the intro to the Tunnel Vision 2 mixtape he goes "i want to big up all my studio engineers... hold tight all the 10-pound an hour massive, the 20-pound an hour massive, the 30-pound an hour massive for certain guys. Cause, you know, it ranges."

Boy Better Know & co. have begun releasing these mixtapes for free and getting the CD versions in the shops. You can buy Tunnel Vision 1 here, or snag mp3s here. TV 2, wherein Wiley discusses the salary range of his various studio assistants, can be got here with a bit of reply-registration action. OK, back to bizness--

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Examine grime vs. dubstep in terms of how they treat the black voice. Grime has MCs spitting their own lyrics -- often angry, yes, but also often vulnerable, introspective, playful. Dubstep, on the other hand, devoices black subjectivity, swapping the microphone's live uncontrollability for the sample's prerecorded rigor-mortis. If you hear a voice in dubstep, it's usually sampled, a fragment, an emptied signifier of 'blackness' or 'dread' or or ethnic otherness (same goes for the oriental samples). Distanced in time and dislocated. Whereas the voices in grime are so up-to-date you have to live in London or scan the message boards just to decipher what's going on that week. Check Wayne & Woebot's comment conversation for a brief forray into similar territory.

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the Digital Mystikz anthem 'Earth a Run Red' snatches that snippet of Ritchie Spice's roots classic, stripping away the rest of his conscious poetry. The second Dub Police 12" contains a handful of standard dancehall hype samples -- all serving as surface gloss to contextualize it as dub, soundclash, virile macho, whatever fantasy patois boasts alight in the collective imagination of their target audience. I could go on; these are just 2 examples among many. There is no agency, the black voice is used as spice... These structural cliches bore me in breakcore, and they bore in me dubstep. Wiley isn't boring, even when he's examining boredom (ennui, wot u call it?)

Wiley - A Time and a Place (Tunnel Vision 2)

Yeah, the cynic in me says: of course, when futuristic black thugs start saying stuff and self-organizing (Boy Better Know et al), that's precisely the moment when overground critical discussion surrounding the scene loses interest. Looked at another way, it's easier to write on instrumental music than to write about music with words coming from a place you don't necessarily understand or relate to or want to recognize.

An instrumental song contains an abstract consciousness, but a beat with an MC on it works more like a novel -- if you pay attention to the words and the person is spitting something of substance, it's a full-on immersion in someone´s mindset as it stylizes, flows, rhymes instelf into existence. And a ground-up genre like grime offers none of the usual content filters that come with major label rap -- this artistic consciousness $hit enters the ear undiluted. "Grime will not die even if I die" announces a messianic Wiley on Tunnel Vision 2, "hold tight the nonbelievers."

Devlin is young angry and white, and homophobic, and 17, so his lyrical-spiritual bandwidth isn't nearly as wide as grime's elders, but he does the war / street reality thing nimbly, aided here by the pathos of Wiley's synthetic beat.

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remember the 'Hater' song by Various Productions that i posted here? A few months after I upped it the clever lads were signed to XL. Wiley must have liked 'Hater' as much as I did: he jacked the beat for a 100% free Logan Sama mixtape, War Report, downloadable here. or here.

Various' disembodied female voice, here truncated, only announces "I'm a sinner" -- doing to the original song what dubstep and breakcore do to reggae voices, cut out the body, leave a trace in hopes that the aura remains. As memes, ghosts dubs traces and duppies are attractive. But do you know anybody who doesn't feel slighted when they discover that you want to avoid their presence? OK, so Various got cool caché from this, etc etc.

but we shouldn't forget the power (relations) of dub. Who mutes? Who pushes the faders around? perhaps Lee Scratch Perry is such a hero and icon because he made and unmade, collaboed on the songs, recorded them, (presumably) paid the musicians, and then eviscerated, ghosted, what his companions had given him. Close to it all. Perry helmed the in-house production of ghosts, intimate dub production-process, a contemporary rarity in the age of a downloaded accappela, the tooth of body alive or dead or dying or like lichen kinda both and neither.

The soundboy is always being buried.

"Never said anything else" she continues, elsewhere, in memory. And we never even caught her name.

geroyche () (URL) - септември 28 2006

some points taken, but it'd disagree if you want to make this a grime vs. dubstep thing. kode9 does wonderful original tracks with daddy gee and spaceape. and the digital mystikz's "anti war dub" is another good example.
ironically mala, pioneering and notoriously keeping up the 'recontextualization' of jamaican artist samples, is one of the few black dubstep producers. so i wouldn't make it a racial issue either.
it sure is a phenomenon, but it's older than all this and inherent to nearly all forms of instrumental dance music. since early jungle at least.

i am not sure if it really is worse than doing what afrika bambaataa did to kraftwerk. sampling is cultural exchange, one way or the other. are samples dislocated and out of context? sure. by definition. but why should we treat the 'black voice' any different?
mind you, clich� bores me too. a dull track with "ethnic" samples is still dull.

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ombudsman () - септември 28 2006

Never have been able to get deep into grime, I like the beats, but the vocals always sound too uniform, too cool for much more than angry tough attitude, and a banal cadence. Too often repetitive and quick like Beans (another unfavourite).

I appreciate your thoughts on paid duppies versus/spice, what would happen without new recordings to sample from? But overall I respectfully disagree, what was the lou reed "hey whiteboy" from firecamp stories about then? Samples are reference points and symbols too. It can become spice, but it's dance music, I like spice, I like samples, I think geroyche has it right with his assertation that a "dull track with "ethnic" samples is still dull." I think a good track is still a good track despite issues around authorship, paid present-duppies vs. sampled past-ghostas. As a dub nut it's all about spice for me on some levels.

And just to stir the pot: if you can accept the homophobia of artists you appreciate, you should accept "honky" producers cultural identification with the spice of macho angry jamacian culture. I think cultural appropriation has had too much wieght for too long, long live cultural identification.

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halfbreedhalf - септември 29 2006

....'the black voice used as spice'........ by the same token a lot of grime's banal verbals is stewed in the juices of an exotic East or Sarf London working class upbringing...... not a particuarly interesting dialogue inside London if you're over 24 say....but outside of the U.K it's audio tourism..... the music's frequently fierce....but the verbal monologues are pure shite and drivel........ encoded in subcultural linguistics of course........

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hal () - септември 29 2006

Some excellent points, Jace!
While on the devoiced/dislocated/sampled & simplified topic, the ubiquitous wailing divas of house (etc) quickly came to mind. Pretty similar. If I may:

...a lack of complex, honest, weird (etc) [female] voices in mainstream culture. the images & attitudes & ideas that music expresses informs a lot of people's ideas / [gender role] fantasies...


Will check out the Wiley links (thanks!)

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doom (URL) - септември 29 2006

Thankyou so much for the 'Im a Sinner' mp3 Rupture, my connection is long right now so I've not been able to d/l the 'war report'. 'Hater' was one of my fav. tunes from last year & Wiley smacks it.

Massive post, it will take me awhile to digest this lot. All these long words "encoded in subcultural linguistics" are somtimes abit much for someone that works with his hands for a living.

The thing I love most about grime is that you cannot get a handle on it. It barely has a handle on its self.

If you pay attention 90% of what people say to one another is "pure shite and drivel" it doesn't make verbal interaction any less important.

"ssswwwiiinnnggg, bat 'im"

the power of grime mcs is that they go beyond the verbal, way beyond.

I'm skept'ical (sic) of any grime mc that doesn't build riddims still.

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Rich c90 - септември 29 2006

Hey Jace,

Interesting, I've been having this dubstep v grime conversation over and over again recently...

My own two cents is that much as I loved grime 6 months ago, I havent heard that many decent grime productions recently. It's gone a bit stale in my opinion. Lyrically, I think Wiley's been at his most interesting recently (personaly fave: "there ain't no club you wont see me at, there ain't no standard time I have my tea at"). But production wise, I've found it all a bit stale. And that whole 'war bars' thing isn't my cup of tea.

In stark contrast, there is so much variety in dubstep at the moment - coki, mala, kode9, burial, caspa, rusko, pinch, skream, loe - one and all of those are caning it...

as for the reggae samples... i dunno. its part of the sound, reflecting dub influences and, as is often missed, jungle influences...
at the end of the day, earth a run red is just a BIG tune... big up coki every time...

Easy, Rich_c90

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jc - септември 29 2006

hey Rich--

a bit of an aside-- i had a quintessential dubstep experience w/ Earth a Run Red. SoulJazz gave it to me, and i wasnt really feeling it at home, then I heard Maxximus play it out in Berlin, and the whole perspective of BASS / BEATS shifted, suddenly there was this massive low-end and the landscape changed and I was pretty much floored. So yeah, big up Coki on the boards, that is some incredible soundsystem music. I like the sample too, the dark/dread vibe... it just seems a little too easy, after jungle, after d&b, after breakcore, all these producers doing the same basic thing w- reggae vox. I'm never gonna be a sample cop though! Just pointing out an old structure which i never dug too much as it appears, yet again, in a 'new' genre.

i havent heard Rusko yet... so much bass, so little time... j

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boxmyth () - септември 29 2006

I grew up a white, middle class American, so I have very little in common with grime MC's, yet I listen to more grime right now than local radio (Los Angeles area). There's something so different about it to me, even never having been a fan of US rap, I'm drawn to the viscral nature of it. The way JME throws down his lyrics for example, I've played him for friends of mine who couldn't even find the UK on a map and they hear something there that they've never heard before. And they like it.

I haven't had nearly as much exposure to dubstep, but the lack of lyrics that add so much to something like grime doesn't make me want to run out and order dubstep off the intertubes en masse. That said, I'm also listening to Burial nearly non-stop since it came out in the US last Tuesday, so I may come to change my mind on that sometime soon.

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timeblind (URL) - септември 29 2006

I really don't think its about the lack of acceptance of the "black voice". I think the initial infatuation phase of grime has just worn off and we are just tired of having british people yelling at us about their personal career development.

One thing the UK grime guys are failing at is communicating outside of their subbaculta. They are scared of being appropriated, acting like they will get culturally robbed. US hip hop learned how to do it: bum rush the show. Don't wait for the mainstream to come appropriate you, go appropriate them first. Hip Hop infected the whole planet and now everybody dresses and swaggers like them. The rise of JayZ or Missy is important to me personally because they bring me along for the ride.

The Grime guys are insular and honestly their a bit scared outside of the UK. Cameo and D Double didn't even know there WAS a berlin wall (according to XLR8R). You have to dig to catch the subtleness and humor of Wiley (he's also my fave), and you have to put up with a lot of shouting and overly compressed, hideously mixed painful recordings. And loud egos, lots of egos. Real artists make the personal universal. You can be obnoxious, egotistical, complex, nerdy, freaky or perverted if you can make us want to be in on it. But you have to get us on your side of the mic. If you're complex and you act like "don't come near me" then people won't. Don't say the mainstream rejected them.

Dubstep is in a good growth stage now, new things to hear in each track. The reggae thing is probably a temporary phase, a pause to reference the roots. I don't mind it as much as I minded all the halfstep snoozedom. That kept me out of dubstep before.

@ombudsmen - great point ! jace supports fag haters and we like badmen. I can't spin batty boy lyrics, can't touch that.

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jc - септември 29 2006

nice thoughts, Timeblind. although i take you up on "one thing the UK grime guys are failing at is communicating outside of their subbaculta. They are scared of being appropriated, acting like they will get culturally robbed."

in my personal experience, i've had a lot of grime artists reaching out to me with tunes or questions or whatever.

but more broadly, I'm not comfortable with the formulation that any 'subculture' should communicate -- i.e. translate itself -- to the mainstream. Why? Should the funk carioca kids start rhyming in English, so they can escape their subcultural ghetto and communicate to the mainstream in its lingua franca?

and do you really think that hiphop appropriated the mainstream rather than the mainstream appropriating/exploiting hiphop or a hazy give-and-take comprise btwn the two forces? as a global lifestyle-product hiphop is hugely influential, but that global product is heavily mediated, virtually unrecognizeable from the artform birthed in scarred-up South Bronx.

Loud egos or soft ones, i prefer that grime (and dubstep!) invent their own rules and heroes and distribution channels and aren't readily absorbed into pop culture. Wiley rhymes on and on about his fierce, manic, oftentimes seemingly irrational independence and freedom. he's fighting for respect and recognition on his own artistic terms. Dubstep producers make tunes that NEED to be heard on a high-quality soundsystem, at loud volume -- its seductive, you need to go to the nights to hear the music as it really is, the subculture drawing people to it, rather and 'communicating' outside to the mainstream...

when i hear arguments for the underground to explain/communicate itself better to the overground, I think of Gerald Early's take on American desegregation, "the demand that blacks bear the burden of integration by making themselves appealing and tolerable to whites, as if they must apologies for the phenomenon of their being. This has made blacks angry and depressed, as they see the entire social mode of integration as a new concerted effort to tell them that they are inferior."

caffeine! caffeine!

Ru-Jace (batty-luxx, baby!)

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timeblind (URL) - септември 30 2006

I don't think subcultures NEED to or SHOULD escape themselves. I'm just saying that its a natural consequence: if you don't communicate on a universal level, then you won't be listened to outside your culture. Its not that the mainstream won't accept them, its that they aren't communicating their culture in a way that people outside can get pleasure out of it. So Grime won't spread past UK people and music hipsters. Lady Sov is marketable, D Double E is not.

The thing is, many Grime MCs are expecting to get more mainstream acceptance and are frustrated that they aren't. So they should understand why and how that works. and stop complaining that you aren't getting $100,000 contracts

I'd rather they stayed messy and subcultural and hard to understand. I don't like dancehall->RnB crossover either. But it bores me to hear them try to make Huge Potential albums, crappy looks-like-US-hip-hop videos. That's just emulating bigness, but they can't floss on that level.

US Hip Hop marketed the fuck out of itself. They invented Cristal and yachts, money cash hoes bling booty doo-doo-brown stankonia poetry chess boxing kungfu and glorified gangster violence. All these stereotypes (of course limiting) they invented, marketed and sold it. RZA opened up a new stylistic channel, and marketed it and made it work. That's not compromise, but it does require smart marketing. Yes, I think that Hip Hop succeeded. Much of it is crap, some of it is great. That's the mainstream for you.

you don't HAVE to make yourself appealing to the mainstream, but then you don't HAVE to sell records to them either. but don't go blaming the mainstream for that.

in any case Grime is obviously more concerned that they can't get into mainstream non-UK RnB, Hip Hop or Jamaican dancehall markets. nearly all of their non-UK press has been from the electronic (mostly white) dance side. very few US Hip Hop heads have even noticed that grime exists, seriously.

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timeblind (URL) - септември 30 2006

>Should the funk carioca kids start rhyming in English...

electro beats and rave stabs ARE the international language
that's why it crossed over

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w&w (URL) - септември 30 2006

jace's point about "funky, fractured subjectivity" seems crucial to me here. it's not so much about policing what people can do or not with samples or other musical signifiers, it's about the range of sonically-expressed subjectivities out there and which ones we affirm in the press/bog and in our music (as DJs, producers, etc.).

even soundclash soundbites and disembodied divas -- which, btw, are usually black as well as female -- can be manipulated anew, by manipulators of various subject positions, to say something different about contemporary culture (and one's perspective on it, place in it, etc.). but when we're rehearsing cliches, and a limited set of cliches, that's another thing entirely.

now, i don't think jace is arguing that dubstep is more guilty of rehearsing cliches than grime (or breakcore for that matter), and i certainly wouldn't say so myself. but he does put his finger on an emerging trend in critical discourse, which for me -- as much as i dig dubstep -- seems troublingly parallel to the shift from jungle to d'n'b in the mid-late 90s.

and it's in that context where dubstep's sonic blackness -- if you want to hear that sort of thing -- seems crucial, at least as crucial as grime's willingness to embrace similarly putatively 'exotic' sound sources and of subjectivities that press beyond the stereotypes ("black kids shouting") people still clearly hear as far too dominant in that genre.

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dredhandz (URL) - септември 30 2006

How can one miss the D n' B / Dubstep connection? For me, grime is far more interesting (both production-wise and obviously in the lyrical realm). And, I think Jace is spot on as far as calling out all the superfluous use of reggae samples. It's the same boring MO that annoyed me about Jungle back in the day. The old DJ Hype type tracks that threw in a couple crap hip-hop samples, and tried to market itself as "urban" or something. I'm a big fan of the slower dubstep (half-step?) stuff right now, like Timeblind and Shackleton, simply because the sounds are new. But most the stuff I've heard just comes off as a desperate attempt to re-contextualize sounds normally associated Drum and Bass. Dubstep even has some of the same labels putting the stuff out like Tech-Itch etc. Changing the basic rhythm patterns (from two-step to more of an "open" take on beat programming) does not make it new, simply a re-packaged form of D&B. Much like when Ed Rush et al. started calling tracks with similar rhythm patterns "neuro funk". Rubbish. At least HALF of current dubstep productions seem like attempts to revive a dead scene. Even the fashion at Dubstep nights is reminiscent of the DnB scene. I'm suspicious to say the least. But Grime survives on it's lyrical feats alone. I played some Wiley/Roll Deep joints for some Bay Area rap cats, and they found the speed/clarity of it really fucking hype.

As is always the case, about half of everything is crap. Nice post JC.

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geroyche () (URL) - септември 30 2006

you guys lost me over the grime discussion. my knowledge there is very limited and the albums and compilations i heard (lord of the mic, treddin on thin ice...) actually didn't get my excited over it. i must say timeblind nails down pretty accurately why i don't care ;)
that plus the whole 8bar thing. don't see how it's far "more interesting production-wise". but anyway, that's subjective.

i don't share the dubstep/dnb observations.
some dnb producers (tech itch, juju, skynet...) are getting into dubstep right now, yes. but i think it's rooted in garage (or however they called it... zed bias etc.) and didn't set out to revive dnb. that's limewax's part :)

mixed emotions over the reggae samples.
i will admit it's odd to have "praise ye jah ... king of kings" randomly thrown in in coki's upcoming tune "torture" [way to name a track with such vocals] on tempa024 - an anthem still, because the track is ace - but in the end that's artistic freedom and one expression of the many experiments that currently take place in the dubstep sphere [did you hear blackdown's "crackle blues"?].
we are nowhere near newskool raggajungle where all that is left to productions is pretty much the race who remixes which new dancehall tune first while the music itself has gone stale.

i'm with timeblind there again. currently i mind instrumental aspects more, and see all this as a phase of development, a phase which you were right to point out of course jace.
you are being heard (excellent comments e.g. on qawalli there).
we'll see if and how dominant it gets.

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geroyche () (URL) - септември 30 2006

"you are being heard" was suppsoed to be a hyperlink. guess your blog doesn't like html comments.
so there: http://dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=..

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geroyche () (URL) - септември 30 2006

oh... and, sorry if i am on a comment spree but, it must be noted that nights like bash
http://www.myspace.com/bashsound seem to (i haven't attended one yet) actually prove that unlike with other scenes there's more to the reggae/dubstep connection than just plain "spicing up" of unrelated, white, dance music.

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one duran (URL) - октомври 2 2006

great post! given that the commercial/media response to grime is what set off this thread, i'm wondering what folks might think about the effect of distribution of grime vs dubstep as of late? big shift to be able to go to bleep and d/l a flac version of the new loefah, as compared to scrambling to buy 1/500 white labels. in the context of commercial ventures outside the uk, this certainly must factor in. with lady sov about to drop on def jam all this could get real heated real quick.

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Richc90 - октомври 2 2006

geroyche's comment about BASH is so true... i think the relationship between dubstep and dub is tighter than it sometimes sounds like people are giving it credit for... If you've ever heard mala play out, for instance, you'll know that he always starts with some augustus pablo or something similar...

Also, I think there is something to the thought that you haven't even heard a dubstep track til you've heard it on a big system. I'd heard Loefah's "root" hundreds of times on my own decks, but that track blew my mind when i heard it at DMZ. In comparison to how they sound 'live', it's arguable that most dubstep tracks sound watered down when you hear em at home - with or without reggae samples.

And yeah, the early dnb/dubstep comment seems to miss the point about the history. I can't hear any dnb influences in burial, for instance.

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ripley () (URL) - октомври 2 2006

really great post and comments! Especially like the discussion of whose voices get out, get silenced, get heard.

of course, in neither dubstep nor grime tactics do women's voices come out particularly well, perhaps for different reasons, perhaps for the exact same reason..

I also wonder about the responses of audiences or listeners in dubstep v. grime. About who listens, who gets down, who gets to be down. Don't know, from my rarified perspective (in the US, etc) whether the ladies tend to be more present in audiences for either.

what are the effects of the voices we do hear? of course it matters who you are. the evocation of excitement' and 'comfort/safety (and risks posed by their absence)' are awfully bound by one's own experience and position within race, within sexuality and gender.

So I also agree (with wayne and jace and maybe timeblind) that dubstep's reception in the larger world is likely smoothed by its absence of inconveniently assertive people demanding to be heard. Grimes demands are more explicit and allow for less interpretive space than dubstep.

that assertiveness has multiple effects..

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tobias c. van Veen () (URL) - октомври 2 2006

"Dubstep, on the other hand, devoices black subjectivity, swapping the microphone's live uncontrollability for the sample's prerecorded rigor-mortis."

Huh? Jace, are you telling me you're seriously going to argue that vocals are better because vocals= politics some 30 years after DETROIT TECHNO and 50 years after SUN RA threw that to the wind? C'mon man, rhythm speaks without words, words don't make it better, and I hardly believe that audiences turn away from grime 'cause of WHAT they are saying -- people dig dubstep just like people digged what Adorno hated in the '30s: that "hot jazz" without lyrics, that ambiguity of da' riddim which John Cage, speaking of percussion, saw as the future of music. The future arrived 30 years ago, we already saw the Future City, and now you're trying to divide genre from dubstep by authenticating voice and dissing the drumbox? C'mon.

- tobias c. van Veen

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jace - октомври 2 2006

Tobias- i appreciate your Eshun-esque cultural timeline but in order to fit my position into it you've had to do some misreading. I certainly wasn't trying to privilege 'voice' over 'rhythm'; if you google around you'll find me stating several times in interviews that the strongest possibilities for 'political' music are to be found in instrumental -- voiceless -- songs.

This post was talking about some differences in agency between sampled vocal fragments and 'live' MCs. I didn't touch on the riddims ("diss the drumbox"!?) at all, and I also underscored that MCs' vocal art is far from authentic/essentialist -- "funky, fractured subjectivity... playful".

As Ripley eloquently points out, dubstep offers more interpretive space than grime. Just don't rush to label that space another stop on the afrofuturistic/avant-garde spaceways line. Always good to remember that the first Futurists were also fascists.

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tobias c. van Veen () (URL) - октомври 2 2006

Yah, hi Jace, I didn't read the comments or follow-up until after either, so take that as it is. To make my short and hornet-inducing comment more clear: I think the effect of yer piece as it first came out -- which might contradict, simply, with work you've written elsewhere, and I certainly can't know all your other pubs! -- throws voice against rhythm in the sense that a sample also needn't necessarily be reduced to voice-as-content, to a decontextualized or fragment of a larger talking voice, to a voice disembodied and distanced, tritely lifted, or what have you, which you do (I believe "distanced" is the word you sought). Why not consider the sample as part of the rhythm than the words? Why begin with voice and make dub the version? Why not grime from dub? Why consider a sample, even of a 'voice,' as a voice at all or any longer -- which is to say, why put it on the same spectrum? A sample can be like a percussion hit, a rimshot, an echo. One could dig into the 'liveness' of grime on similar tangents. I know it's live, just like vocals express and say things in ways dubstep can't communicate. But is grime really more imbued with the live? These rhymes are rehearsed, memorized and/or written down. The instrument just happens to be the glottis rather than the electrical circuit (which might mean all the difference in and of the world, and I'm not sure even I agree with this point, but this is nonetheless to sound it out). I'm sure there's some spontaneity, but every MC practices like all hell, sets the rhymes in place to the beat. Point being that voice/samples might have more in common along a spectrum here of the machinic-writing interface. Reorienting the axis renders it difficult to see a causal reason for the rise in dub / decline in grime press phenomena.

Now it's possible that the shift has to do with other factors entirely: basically a whole wack of minimalist techno driven / breakcore / experimental and so forth DJs have discovered dubstep who don't spin anything else with 'vocals' or hip-hop for that matter -- so why would such fine folk turn to grime now? But that's on the level of pragmatics that others here have better put than I.

As for authentic, drumbox, yah, these are effects of your thought patterns, not in your direct quotations & they don't need be to amplify the effects of what you're saying. You might not like it, but there ya' go.

By complicating the axis and doubling it, considering voice as rhythm element to begin with, the grime/dubstep relation might be heard in a different tone, which might get farther at the scenario in which grime declines, dubstep ascends, for all the socio-political reasons you (& I) would wish to invoke and think.

& yesh, barb taken -- and notice for what it's worth that I never once said "AfroFuturist" or mentioned Eshun. I know fully well the futurist - fascist connection -- in any case, I get into that a bit here _
http://www.cut-up.com/news/detail.php?si..

And if I didn't say so, good piece -- it stirred up some controversy, why not? Throw it all back into the flames. Not everyone plays the blog diplomacy all the time, I'd rather throw into the ring a bit to see what flies out. Sometimes. Have a tea on me, whatever time zone you happen to be in.

Cheers mate from Canada.

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sizzle saying words - октомври 2 2006

Interesting discussion. Not sure how concise or on point I can be in this context but here goes. I agree, more or less wholeheartedly with Jace's post. I've posted my own thoughts about this in relation to breakcore's use of reggae before, which I find, for lack of a better term, a bit superficial. My feeling is that the only interesting direction for all this hybridization, mashing up and creation of strange cultural chimeras to take is between two consenting adults, and ideally without a large amount of money changing hands. When it remains one sided (someone taking a sample, vocal, etc) we miss a fertile opportunity as people and artists. I find that I do my best work outside of my comfort zone, in constant danger of embarrassing myself. I've learned to cultivate that and push myself into those situations.

Tobias: I think you are stretching a lot with your 'voice as rhythm' argument. Certainly voice has rhythm and can be REDUCED to rhythm but to say a sample can exist completely independent of it's verbal content is a painful looking mental contortion. It doesn't seem to me like you have a rap or reggae background (not meant as an insult) but if you did you would know that these are very intensely WORD oriented musics. Texts with direct, community related, non-abstract meanings not 'open to any interpretation by fans' like some modern rock lyrics. If you watch for example recent videos of the last World Cup Soundclash (google irie and chin death before dishonor) and watch for which points the DJ rewinds the tune it is almost invariably in repsonse to a key lyric naming one of the other selectors in the clash and cutting them verbally. Watch the crowd. They go absolutely insane, flame throwers going in the air, banging on anything in reach, waving t-shirts as flags, blowing on horns. This is not because of the rhythm in which something was said, but the words that were said and the person they were directed at. Calling out names live on stage allows just about the smallest 'interpretive space' possible, the meaning is quite clear. There is no easy analogy for this in purely instrumental music. Dubstep DJs or any other players of instrumentals, as far as I can tell, don't clash, not in the organized, high stakes fashion of reggae selectors.

Grime is a bastard of dancehall, among many other things, and this practice exists there too. Logan's War Report CD is a document of the latest verbal war to roil the scene. I personally find it wonderful, intense and exciting. A phrase that's often used to deride grime 'young black english guys shouting at you' is one of the things I love about it, its anger, energy and defiant restlessness. The assertion of self-identity in the face of demoralizing, de-individualizing circumstances. I used to scratch that itch with rap music, but rap music isn't trying to fill that role too much anymore as it digests american materialism. Those of us who need something like that in our lives are thrust further afield, looking for that same edge of anger and rush of truth in response to a hostile environment.

Perhaps some don't need that in their life, to listen to someone shouting angrily over weird often hostile beats. I find it brave and cathartic, and lately have only found it in grime, with a few exceptions in dancehall (baby cham's Ghetto Story) and a few in rap (none come to mind).

I had a talk with a DJ friend and we were talking about New York DJ Funkmaster Flex and his incessant shouting, rewinds, bizarre vocal ID sound effects (how many know the hi-pitched Go Flex or absurd movie announcer white guy saying rap slang), explosions etc. I said that while I sympathized with people finding them annoying and distracting I saw them as a part of the whole and having been out of the country found it comforting to hear them again (many of those same samples). My friend agreed, and explaining the people who thought otherwise, said "Yeah, basically a lot of people don't REALLY like hiphop".

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w& (URL) - октомври 3 2006

well said, sr.shadetek.

to add a couple more cents and pursue a latent thread here, it would be misleading to restrict dubstep's dubness to obvious (or, indeed, "superficial") reggae references. when i first heard the stuff a few years ago, i was struck by how it managed to be dubby with so few telltale skanks and soundboy snips. it was more in the use of space, the place of bass, the carib-esque -- but ultimately definitely grimey -- rhythms. that's another reason why overt reggae references, esp via easy samples, seem not just 'retro' but retrogressive. (i'm more into the transgressive, cultch, which dubstep is too.)

and as much as vocal samples might offer various meanings through their timbral, melodic, and rhythmic properties, to divorce them from socio-cultural-political associations is not only to miss out on a great deal of their resonance but, further, resigns them to the sort of reproduction of power relations that ripley describes. the disembodied (de-raced) diva, who reared her head a couple times above, is an excellent (erased) example.

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tobias c. van Veen () (URL) - октомври 3 2006

Well, think this, which is little distortion: voice is often reduced to *words*. Words that, in the above example, are further narrowed into clash disses, marks of conflict, the "clash" as the institution of the you vs. me mentality, or as other posts noted above, homophobic references, self-aggrandizing, and so on. All these words that say: me me me, I am the ego, I kick your ass. Is there where the socio-political force is? Sure, you can read this, analyze it, contextualize it, do the work of the observer or the music journalist -- and not all words are saying the nasty. But there's the socio-political effect of a lot of these words: me me me, not you. Which is why thinking voice-as-rhythm component to begin with -- as part of a broader flow and rhythm in which music would but be a certain effect -- remains so necessary to hear all that implodes with grime, dancehall and reggae. Otherwise, as others have mentioned above, those words are nasty words indeed, and I can't imagine learning much from them save from the position off some abstract observer charting their effects upon crowd-reactions like some Chicago school audience study back in the '50s.

Now you take these words and recognize that without the rhythmic integration in which they are but a cog they would be, at times, nothing more nor less than a rant, diatribe, or even hate speech, that rhythm perhaps tempers that angry 'socio-political force' and turns it to something beyond the ego of an individual, that there is something temporal touched in the moment a word loses its invective, that the word incorporates within its body something of an alterity which would spray all the spittle, then the rhythm takes on a socio-political effect that can, thankfully, eclipse the narrowest of meaning these words have in their barbed delivery.

I'm trying here to turn away from empirical facticities of delivery, crowd, context and the like, which I think are misleading if the totality of this thought of the voice/version moment are contained within such apparent observation. What I'm trying to impart is that word/rhythm relation need not be first thought along empirical lines as if certain shifting contexts determined the truth of the relation in which words to rhythms operate. When one is trying to connect, especially, to a broader argument in which variables such as 'genre' (dubstep / grime), that is larger abstractions based upon patterns of association in musical, social, political, geographical and other realms, are thereby determined quasi-ethically via the liveness or deadness of words, the rigor mortis of the wiley sample vs. the liveness of the glottis machine, then the parameters in which this thought finds its mark has to acknowledge that certain decisions, formalistic and already moralistic, have been made concerning the system, origin and movement of words, rhythm, voice, machine.

But hey, don't listen to me ... these are just samples and dead words.

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tobias c. van Veen () (URL) - октомври 3 2006

Oh hey: wanted to say this as I find this medium doesn't always work well for this kind of discussion. If I sound a little testy, please realize I respect & enjoy all the responses here, which are considerate & worthy of thought. Sometimes you gotta' say things like this, 'cause when you take a contrarian stance, it often results in -- well, coming off like a diss. And that's what I'm trying to get around, innit?

Back to second morning coffee and real work.

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sizzle sizzling - октомври 3 2006

Hmmmmm. I don't really understand everything your saying.

I'm going to fail again to be concise.

Re: words. I agree that words in music are inevitably and perhaps obviously more than JUST meaning, that they are also music (including rhythm, tonality etc). However, to say that the best way to understand or apprehend them is by removing some of their 'nasty' meaning seems a bit willfully blind. A lot of people like and are comfortable with rap and reggae because they don't understand what is being said. Most white people don't speak Jamaican patois (or NY hood slang) and so miss a lot of the 'nasty' meaning and just apprehend it as rhythm, some vague attitude and energy, all of which is good for dancing, and that's all they want. Personally I'm someone who is interested in words as meaning and so I focus on understanding the meaning of song lyrics. This saves me from some of the ridiculous pitfalls of playing a lot of songs with political content I find reprehensible, like the gay bashing lyrics in certain dancehall songs.

If you don't like self aggrandizing me me ego lyrics, then perhaps you should search somewhere else. This is a major portion of the lyrical content we are talking about here. As far as learning from them, well, I learn about the lives of the people who say these words. I'm not looking for socio political lessons or life advice, I'm reading it as a work of expression, someone telling about their life or environment and how they respond to it.

As far as liveness or dead-ness of words, I'd just like to point out that there is quite a huge gap between a sample and a purposefully recorded vocal. In the former case the original authors right to choose the context their words appear in is removed, and in the latter they are actively shaping that context and shaping the meaning of the words to fit.

What I'm talking about has veered away from dubstep and grime's relationship, because almost no one in dubstep is tracking vocals. I think that is a missed opportunity and would love to see, like Jammer did on the Neckle Camp CD, more people taking dubstep riddims and voicing MCs and more importantly good singers on them. I don't see the reggae angle between the two as boring or insignificant and would love to see people develop the musical harmonic and melodic areas possible there as well as what can be added by the layer of meaning words add. The DMZ Anti War Dub tune is a great example of the potential here, I'd love to hear more like that.

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bent - октомври 4 2006

this post and comments are amazing.

the last point about words and some audiences preference for them to be unintelligible is also interesting in relation to reggaeton and funky. oftentimes to be playing some of this, which white hipsters are loving, i am struck by that - it's so clear that the words are just part of (or distractions from) the rhythm b/c of their being in another language which most in the crowd don't understand. it's such a difference from playing it to a crowd that understands what the lyrics are, what they mean, what it means to sing along to them. so maybe the opposition that's being created between "words as rhythm" and "words as message" is not true but that they can be both at the same time, or to different people?

the idea of somebody standing on hte corner saying the words that are in (just the first example to come to mind) the yung joc single "i know yous ee it" is compeltely repulsive, but when it is paired with music, it's like it makes the words more palatable? like honey with medecine? "a spoonful of sugar..."? but one of the themes i've found most interesting from this conversation is the concept of who can palate what (ie. batty man, female present absence, etc) and how we each come to our own conclusions. what if i ( a queer lady) have a higher tolerance for sexist or homophobic lyrics than a straight guy? what does that mean?

sorry for comments that are maybe not as deep or full of lowery language that is hard to understand as others.

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same old sizzle - октомври 4 2006

bent, yeah I think it is a lot about finding what you relate to and are comfortable with. And I appreciate people who don't post in obscure language, but then I guess that's down to whether you like some meaning with your words or they're just rhythm and texture.

On the 'batty lyrics' tip, another thing to take into account (also relates to actually understanding what you are listening to) is that, like it or not, often these terms are simply used as terms of insult rather than accusations of specific behaviors. Just the way juvenile americans will say 'shut up, you homo' wiley says 'trying to diss man about man got stabbed, you BATTY'. He's not literally calling his enemy a man who likes men, he's using it as a more generic insult. This of course stems from real hateful violent attitudes and references them, but is not actually 'anti-gay hate speech' as far as I'm concerned. Therefore, I wouldn't feel ambivalent about playing the Wiley tune, but I refuse to play for example Buju Banton's 'Boom Bye Bye' which is a song that's literally about killing gay people.

This has gotten way away from the original topic but I'm having fun so, fuck it.

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sizzling over - октомври 4 2006

Also, just had another thought about 'de-voicing black subjectivity'. The reason hiphop has not completely passed out of the control of the black people who created it yet (like for example rock n roll) is that it puts detailed, localistic expression of black subjectivity at it's very center. Eminem flew in the face of that and probably opened the beginning of the end, but at the moment hiphop is still overwhelmingly black and the trends are set by people in the ghetto. Techno, on the other hand, was extremely un-successful with regard to these goals (whether they tried or not, not sure) due to the priveleging of the 'drumbox' and faceless instrumentals (guess we're talking about drum machines?) Ask anyone, black or white, where techno comes from and you're very likely to hear 'Europe', un-true though that may be. I think that's why now people in Detroit like DJ Assault are taking their drumbox music and putting 'gel and weave, gel and weave, weave weave weave weave weave weave weave' over it or one of my favorite Assault lyrics: 'I am not a robot. I am not from outer space. I'm a nigga. This is not electronic, this is not techno, it's nigga music' with some troutmanesque 'nigga music' vocoder interjections for the chorus. Seems pretty clear how he feels about the recent history there and what he's trying to do about it. The tunes are, as you might have guess titled 'Gel and Weave' and 'Nigga Music' respectively.

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bruna () - октомври 6 2006

Interesting discussion here!
This is a tricky issue.
I've fallen in love with dubstep over the past couple of years, but I agree that it's become another formula, either with orientalist sounds or samples of (usually) black (and often female) voices. The effect is that the original sounds and voices get watered down and therefore made more 'palatable' to certain tastes. And yes it is being mostly produced by white men, though that is not an unusual pattern; it happens the world over that 'dominant' (in terms of their 'race' more than their class, perhaps) groups depend on marginal culture to refresh their culture. Having said this, I�m not entirely comfortable in defining people by their skin colour. �Black� or �white� are different things in different places. A person considered 'white' or 'light brown' in Brazil could easily be called 'black' in England or the USA. Neverteless, is it stealing? I could be seen that way. On the other hand I don�t think people should be so separated and stick to �their� culture.

Ripley, made an important point in reminding us of gender issues. I found the dubstep scene sexist. When I was in
London, I saw a flyer for a dubstep night saying "the kind of ruff
even your girlfriend is into"... well, that one speaks for itself. For more examples, check the dubstep forum.

I went to BASH when Jerry Dammers was booked to dj. I asked him what he felt, as someone who'd been involved with
2tone, about the situation we were in - listening to "black" music at
Plastic People (it's not just a dubstep night), when just about the
only black people there were working behind the bar. He said "it's all
segregated now"... "and this is Hoxton". I'm not old enough to know whether nowadays, in terms of music culture, England is more segregated than it was in the 70s or 80s. But if it is, I�d like to understand why and how that happened.

However, I don't think that the option of not having an MC necessarily
means a conscious erasure of certain voices, even if that is what
happens. I've used some of these dubstep records to do a sort of soundtrack to a live remix of a Brazilian film about the life of a street kid at a street event here, and we used speech and sound from
the film to �interfere� with the music. Had the records already had MCs recorded on them, it wouldn�t have worked. Moreover, not having MCs recorded means someone can MC with the dj 'live'.

On samples � well, it's a shady area. When you get a song like Enigma�s
'The Return to Innocence' that is totally based around a sample from a Taiwanese (monk, I think) singing, and you know that the track made LOADS of money and the singer got nothing, obviously that's wrong. One also wonders what the people who created sounds or who sang would think if they suddenly, by chance, heard their sounds or voices in someone else�s music� However I don't think there should be a blanket ban on samples.
Jace's track 'Descarriada' makes a great use of that Manu Chao track, and that sample makes all the difference to that piece of music� So I think it depends on the ethics of each particular situation.
Speaking of which, who is the vocalist that sings "hater" on the Various album? I haven't been able to find her name...

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yeah, yeah, I'm sizzle - октомври 6 2006

I do think it's kind of important to point out quickly here that the grime and dubstep scenes as I've experienced them in London are not as segregated as some might make them out to be. In grime most of the crews I know or have worked with are predominantly black but have white members as well, whereas dubstep is maybe the inverse, still portraying either side as racially homogenous is a mistake. There is racism for sure in London but the music scenes are much more mixed than many I've been involved in (including hiphop in NY).

In the grime scene people are very aggressive about attacking perceived racism if it arises (usually in lyrics) and I find that the standards are quite even-handed, not just people trying to protect their own racial group.

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boaby () - октомври 7 2006

this thread reminds me somewhat of the chat between the old-crew minds in iain m banks' "excession" ;)

that's all.

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dre - октомври 10 2006

Wow...really interesting to see how this discussion is unfolding. There are some really HUGE themes that probably need to be discusssed before one can really begin to understand where Jace is coming from...a kind of MIDDLE PASSAGE all DJ's/MC's/etc find themselves in once diving into the memes of Rhythm and Rhythm Culture. The diaspora that spawned the foundations for all the current various subcultures is a mapless land, whatever section you may think you understand is just a tiny part of an extremely complex equation that is STILL in the process of being balanced.

The appropiation of black voices, bodies and minds is what mainstream culture (READ: PROFIT CULTURE) is all about. I think what Jace is getting at though is when the resource that is being mined starts to redefine itself in such a way as to flip its dataset. This afrofuturistic meme reversal attempts to allow the individual/artist to step [outside] the current cultural bounds. A practice of real time fjord traversing at the ego level and quite possibly deeper than that since its influence on others may be MORE important than the individual who is doing the "fjording".

What is also interesting is that along racial lines, the dataset continues to mirror and clone itself into smaller logical fragments of the superset. The laptop/software paradigm and its relation to input/output scenarios of mind, body and voice is compelling enough to suggest a dire moment in time...wherein the "native instrument" is no longer that...instead cultural currents push the richest resources and most valuable assests of Rhythm Culture to the dry banks of the main[STREAM]. Thus, the static nature of the music's manipulation spiral around the nexxus...when instead it should be moving THROUGH the nexxus of the RC.

To put this all another way, duppies need to recognize the difference between wots virtual and wots real. I am not talking about analog vs. digital either. I am talking about sidewinding the liminal crevices of Rhythm Culture in an attempt to maintain a constant connection to the nexxus...no easy feat. fo rizzeal!

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timeblind (URL) - октомври 10 2006

elvis has left the building. and he has been replaced by an army of mixed-race nano-bots.

the world is not black and white, nor is it an average brown. its a fluid network of blood, dna, cultures, ideas and marketplaces. many of us have variously mixed genetic material and we all have inheritances from many cultures. thank god. none of my friends are culturally "all black" nor "all white", and I think it would be pretty freaky to meet somebody who just had no other cultural input (like they were trying too hard).

debussey took scales from java and extended them, duke ellington mixed them with blues scales and stravinsky's orchestration and extended those further and we have the flat 9 sharp 11 chord. now we have lounge jazz guitarists and they're all a bunch of thieving elvises, right ? african music took european and middle eastern scales and (in later years) european percussion and guitar. african-american music in the 20th C at its heart is a mix of european and african musics, just like african-americans themselves are. and that's one of the reasons all of us found it so strong. and white americans also cross-pollinated with african-american culture.

current hip hop samples prog rock and heavy metal and that's cool�because its funny.
hip hop and dancehall use a lot of classical euro-orchestration�I like it.
Bollywood grafted in all kinds of things and now has been grafted into dancehall and via bhangra into many dance styles.

But white breakcore artists transforming ragga vocal samples into crazed vibrating cyborg phantasms � that's not cool ? ok, its played out, but it still was pretty cool. its certainly not white people stealing "black people's realness". the jamaicans themselves have some crazy cross-cultural humor going on (cowboys, bollywood, space-age bashment fashion-wear). they pushed the future-primitive electronic thing, and that's what's being played with. that's what we like about jamaican slang and culture�they define a voice for the future. its not just some realness or blackness. if we wanted that we would go jack old african tribal recordings or maybe aboriginals and pygmies. its the self-identification with a future-primitive powerful voice. it is also a spritzer of instant realness (just add flavor !), yes. but its because its a passionate religious-gangster-apocalyptic shreik. and when you play the record you are affirming it, becoming it, unifying with it, transmitting it, voting for it, increasing its power. things are stronger in the original, sampling increases their power, but that effect decreases as it gets played out.

black artists that exaggerate their "blackness" (uh. gangsterism, streetism, thugism) in order to proclaim 'realness' � that's fucked up. idolising and approving of stupidity and violence in the name of keeping it real and anti-apropriateable � that's keeping racism itself alive. equating gangsterism with realness. that's projecting negative social images that real black people get constrained to and caught up in.

and most of the purchasing audience is white.

"i am not a robot, I am not from the future. I am a nigga. this is nigga music" DJ Assault �that's funny. the audience is 80% white and they like it because the guy is a 'real nigga', but its still funny.

a thought :
isn't selling your niggerdom to white audiences morally far worse than whatever you think is being robbed by sampling black voices ?

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elquieto (URL) - октомври 10 2006

Timeblind, I dig your thoughts and all. I think a lot of people will agree with me though, when I say that writing the 'r' out is not cool, and for once I'm not trying to be cute. Anyway.

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jace - октомври 10 2006

timeblind - the 'r' word, race, is indeed a fluid construct, BUT it is also a very real (and fluid) set of power relations and imbalances; any attempt to talk about race (or _not_ talk about it!) without acknowledging that is real problematic.

Maybe I've been made to feel this way b/c I've had nasty encounters with skinheads and other hateful folk who actively lash out -- insulting & threatening (in my case), hurting, killing -- based on their polarised black-and-white worldview. Race is a construct, racism is real.

i mention skinheads b/c its a very real and obvious example of the fact that race really matters, at least to those on the receiving end of a jackboot or fist, or even the subtler discriminations that infuse daily life.

I can't help but equate your position of protean racial/cultural fluidity with what Paul Gilroy describes as:

"[a] more avowedly pluralistic stance, which is decidedly skeptical of the desire to totalise black culture, let alone to make the social dynamics of cultural integration synonymous with the practice of national building and the project of racial emancipation in Africa and elsewhere... This notional pluralism is misleading. Its distaste for uncomfortable questions of class and power makes political calculation hazardous if not impossible.. It moves towards a casual and arrogant deconstruction of blackness... It is tantamount to ignoring the undiminished power of racism itself and forsaking the mass of black people who continue to comprehend their lived particularity through what it does to them. Needless to say, the lingering effects of racism institutionalised in the political field are overlooked just as its inscription in the cultural industries which provide the major vehicle for this exclusively aesthetical radicalism passes unremarked upon".
-The Black Atlantic

i'm trying to talk about sampling and vocal practices in relation to power, the difference btwn DJ Assault (on his OWN record label) sampling himself -- self-representation -- and other forms of sampling. that last bit of the Gilroy resonates strongly here, i feel.

/j

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timeblind (URL) - октомври 10 2006

ok at this point I'd just like to throw abortion, muslims and hitler into this thread.

I wish it wasn't so difficult to discuss race and racism. Dialog is very scarce and people are so critical and jumpy. I'm not trying to minimize it, or pluralize it out of existence. I'm not in a futuristic star trek fantasy world where everybody looks like a what-race? LA actor :) But somehow I think the future does pluralize racism out of existence. why is that undesirable ?

Racism affects everybody and in many complicated ways. No, I'm not trying to minimize your problems by pointing out that white are affected by anti-black racism too; yes, I have been physically threatened by blacks because I was white. But the most prevalent and problematic racism is the unspoken value systems in media and the passive aggressive not-in-your-face-you-didn't-get-the-job racism.

anyway, my points still stand.

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sizzle reporting for word duty - октомври 11 2006

Hmmm.

'it is also a spritzer of instant realness (just add flavor !), yes. but its because its a passionate religious-gangster-apocalyptic shreik. and when you play the record you are affirming it, becoming it, unifying with it, transmitting it, voting for it, increasing its power. things are stronger in the original, sampling increases their power, but that effect decreases as it gets played out.'

I think this passage is interesting and partially true. But do you think Capleton feels that way when he hears himself re-embodied as an 'angry rasta' soundeffect? I don't know if you're affirming it and making it stronger if you take it out of context. I strongly doubt the original artist feels that way, especially if they aren't getting paid. I don't know if I would. All of this 'becoming one with it' I think applies quite well to playing the original record, but taking it and changing it doesn't really fall under that category, more like becoming two with it. A lot of people do a lot of fighting to maintain artistic control of the creation of their work, and this seems like another scenario where someone else is trying to express themselves using an artists passionate, hard-fought, hard-won personal energy.

As far as talking about race, I wish we could be allowed to talk about it using all the available terms without resorting to childish phrases like 'the n-word' and stuff like that. I know it's shocking to see people write 'nigger' or other hurtful words but I think in a context like this where it's clearly people trying to understand the complex mind-fuck of race relations in 2006 then you should basically call someone a racist or pipe down. Not trying to be rude but if we can't have an un-self-censored discussion about this here then we're in trouble.

But rather than only talking about talking, in response to Timeblind's basic assertion that we are overly relying on racial categories to understand this stuff: That was sort of what I was trying to get at in my above post about racial makeup of grime and dubstep. We are not talking about homogenous monoliths here. However, terms like black, white etc are far from useless, especially since so many people are vigorously living their lives in those perceived categories and acting and reacting based on those categories, people like skinheads, rastas, rappers, djs, internet blog nerds, police, etc.

As a friend was pointing out, people are so uptight these days they are nervous about even saying what color someone is for fear of crossing the race-speech line. I don't think we should over-determine our lives based on racial categories but ignoring them and making them unmentionable is more dangerous, and sort of funny when it's this often super obvious superficial fact about people. It's not like your judging someone by stating their skin color, a fact that anyone can determine by looking at them for 1 second. It's as if there's so much racism beneath the surface that people are afraid their gonna start blurting out hate speech if they even get near the subject. I think a relaxed, friendly and respectful discussion between all involved will get us a lot further, even if something nasty comes up and needs to be addressed at least we can try to assume that people have basically humane motives in wanting to understand and discuss these things.

This is one reason, to come full circle, why I think people should be voicing people and not sampling them, money, artistic control and all that aside. It's quite a funny situation when nerdy white soundboy and thugged out black vocalist meet and both sides usually come out enlightened in surprising and funny ways.

Also I think one of the reasons people sample and don't call these people up, besides money, is that a lot of people are scared of the gangsta poet warrior image that a lot of people project as part of their artistic persona. In my experience no one is as gangster in life as they are on record, everyone has to eat food, laugh, joke, talk to their mom, etc. We are all human and theres a lot more in common than you think, and if there isn't, then there's music. Basically, if you ask me, the only thing that will bring all this stuff down is more reality, more real talk, more contact and more people crossing back and forth across the race barrier carrying honesty and truth.

Yeah, I rambled a bit, that's why I post this stuff here and not on my own blog. Ha!

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dre () - октомври 11 2006

timeblind. you miss the point...instead of trying to route your logik node through critical humor you need to just:

look! at! it!

your understanding of the situation is quite simply your own boundaries of experience...which is fine. personally you could have made your point in a less codified manner I suppose but clearly you feel strongly and chose your words accordingly.
("selling niggerdom"???????????)

...hmm...

I think sometimes there is the belief that culture can be copied and imitated... Out of love, out of hate, for whatever reason. Fundamentally it allows a group or individual to participate alongside another culture in a non-threatening manner in which things can be "sized up" and observed at a safe distance. This type of participation normally leads to limited and regurgitated themes/ideas as the naturally fluid and dynamic culture solidifies under the gaze of its "audience". This is what I thought the whole thread was about...how the sampled voice and the ultimate control and manipulation of that "instrument" essentially is causing a cultural feedback loop...and how the surest way out of the "loop" was a return to the voice source. (i.e. the body as it sought to redefine itself in even more diverse and infintely more complex ways than some hypersonic-phonic electronic glitch acrobatics.) The "source" being far more real, important and versatile in PRACTICE than the "copy"in USE.

I dunno. Just what I think.

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timeblind (URL) - октомври 11 2006

"But do you think Capleton feels that way when he hears himself re-embodied as an 'angry rasta' soundeffect?"

True enuff, but the history of dancehall and hip hop revolves around jacking other people's music (usually unpaid) and givin it that gangsta touch. Often quite savagely. So why are we supposed to be so concerned ? And why do you think he kept releasing a capellas ? I'm sure he is quite happy to be so honored. And a breakcore record makes no money, so that's an invalid point.

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Rob - октомври 11 2006

Hey there, my first post on here (please be kind!). Fascinating discussion, lots of interesting points raised, just wanted to throw something else in if i may. This is directed at Jace but anyone feel free to respond. Reading some of these comments made me think of Muslimgauze, whose music utilized lots of sampled arabic percussion and voices and whilst the music itself wasn't overtly polital, the inspiration, packaging and song titles were very much so. And all this from a white UK based musician with no connection to Israel/Palestine. Just wanted your thoughts on his appropriation and use of samples. He often spoke of wanting to raise peoples awareness of the conflict. Does this therefore make it legitimate?
I've often thought the Muslimgauze music ive heard has sounded like a curious western re-imagining of the region/culture informed by media coverage, TV, Newspapers etc. Always found his music fascinating and mysterious, just after some feedback/responses. Thanks guys.

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jace - октомври 11 2006

hold up -- some breakcore records make money. Venetian Snares sold 15,000 copies of his recent 'Hungarian' album (which included a slew of uncleared old jazz samples).

& many 'released' accappelas are stolen or leaked (from studios, producers, etc)

Muslimgauze is a whole other story... i'll weigh in but no time now... !

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sizzling hot tar - октомври 11 2006

I have to say as much as I love sample based records and music I do see it as a sort of 'necessity is the mother of invention' thing and not necessarily a best case scenario. I posted this on dubstepforum.com
'A jungle analogy:

Original Nuttah by Shy FX ruthlessly dominates any congo natty remix record. There is no contest, and that's why Original Nuttah still gets played like crazy, and reloaded, and played again. Because it's an original voicing, because he's saying 'bad boys inna London' and that is much more interesting and exciting. Not to mention of course that Shy FX is just basically a badman producer, but still.

Also, it's not expensive to voice people, it's difficult, frustrating and annoying, but doesnt need be expensive, especially in 2006 with all the cheap tech about.

And Anti War Dub has a credited vocalist and doesn't sound to me like a sample, and I think that's one of the things that makes it WAY better than many other tunes with reggae voices that are samples. It's evocation of London in-rave violence, dances getting shut down, etc. although more directly pertinent to the Grime scene, still resonates way more strongly for me than some sound clash sample.'

I think that's sort of relevant. Also, it's not specifically about the money but the consent and control that a money agreement signifies. And I doubt Capleton has a lot of input into whether his accapellas come out. This is the reggae business after all, one of the most thiefingest, lyingest, backbitingest businesses in the world.

It's sort of parenthetical but I remember a quote from Lee Perry where he said that he had decided that he must be a white man because he couldn't believe black people would treat one of their own so badly.

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bent - октомври 12 2006

re: timeblind and rob's comments

i feel like these conversations occur over and over again in so many different contexts, and i see this recurring effort to boil it down to a question of "well if it's not OK to do X, is it OK to do Y?" so rather than is being a discussion, wherein things we take for granted are challenged and exmained, it turns into like some "oneupsmanship" about who answer this overly simplistic question. shouldn't this conversation be less about answering an "either/or" question around sampling, and more about challenging assumptions and practices and thinking more critically about music we are creating/playing/listening to?

as for the comment that "I have been physically threatened by blacks because I was white." - to make an analogy b/w that experience and anti-black structural racism is to ignore the history (legacy, ala misfits?) of brutality that white people have unleashed on people in africa and the black diaspora, as well as other people of color the world over. while it does suck when a black kid in the street calls me cracker, it's on a different level than if i were to call her nigger. the weight of historical and present power imbalances is on my side, and so makes the two situations quite different than some want to make them out to be.

similarly, as some french philosopher i think once said "laws against sleeping in public apply equally to the rich and the poor." so too with theft. a poor person stealing in order to eat is a different issue than a rich person stealing for the entertainment. people coming from different positions of privilege and access to resources in society sample for different reasons - and so we return to the idea that one size does not fit all, and it's not a zero-sum game (either/or) but a discussion exploring reality and potential.

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that was me, sizz, above - октомври 12 2006

forgot to write my name ^

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halfbreedhalf (URL) - октомври 12 2006

Bent's comment on 'oneupmanship' is almost the final word...... in more ways than one......as Andre Gide once noted, for some, the idea of being right is always the consolation for being nothing else...... i'm not suggesting that this is true for Timeblind, whose comments are more than equally valid.... but oneupmanship runs the dancehall..... most conversations...and daily life....... i also think Timeblind is gets it about the badman image..... it might be safer to sample it than face it for some..... and i gotta say that as a Londoner once living in East L.A..... i have never encountered such underlying hatred, fear and intolerance as i have in North America, i especially remember Cornel West's speech after 9/11 .... whose comments suggested America now knew what it felt to be unsafe, open to attack... just as any African American has for too long.......but there's also the question for those who are no longer lame ...."when will you throw away the crutch?....".....just some sleepy ideas @ 5am in Thailand

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sizzle is pissed - октомври 12 2006

somehow I forgot to write my name and that caused my last comment to be deleted when I added the hanging addendum above. How annoying. I'll try to remember and add it later, right now I'm too annoyed.

Basically I was saying I agree very strongly with Bent. Right on.

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Lamin () - октомври 13 2006

Props to all the commentors indeed. I've enjoyed following this discussion here for the last few of days. It's been educational, and I especially dig the flow. No final calls, the discussion just continues... people with sincere, honest views reaching opposite conclusions, and the discussion has rich with enlightening points.

---------

Alright, time for some requests-- can anyone direct me to a live link of Rupture's Post Election Mix for Resonance FM? 2004 so long gone, all the links are dead now.

And dear Sir Ruptcha, for Re Up Gang part 3, please consider Etoile de Dakar's Badou N'Diaye. I lost it a few months ago, and it was a great lost. It would be greatly appreciated.

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timeblind (URL) - октомври 13 2006

Just to clarify: I love grime, gangsta hip-hop, non-gangsta hip hop, dubstep and ragga jungle. Some of my comments could be seen as side-taking, but I'm just contrasting. When I talk about marketability, its just analysis�its not my personal likes or dislikes. I like d double way more than lady sov. Likewise about "british people yelling at you" and rough production quality � I am a grime defender. I'm just pointing out reasons that limit its spread for other people.

I DO agree with jace about samples being a more distant interaction

But first I reacted against it because I think that is only in the case of lame sampling ��just lifting something, just borrowing it. eg. putting reggae into dubstep. I think that's weaker. I agree. (I also think its just this summer's trend, a pause to name check the dub in dubstep. when I think of dubstep I think of squelchy bass)

Skilled sampling causes a collision � Juelz jacking motown/the carpenters. Some shock when these things come together. Theft to create something new is better than borrowing to just copy something old.

And I do agree that there are racial/cultural issues behind this weaker fake-collabo tactic. I've learned and modified some of my opinions because of this conversation. thanks people!

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Rob - октомври 13 2006

In response to Bent's post, i totally agree with that position but i didnt really intend my comment about Muslimgauze to come across like an either/or proposition. Rather i was just interested after reading the comments about producers using ragga vocals and eastern samples as empty signifiers of authenticity/otherness, in the way Muslimgauze used his samples and whether, placed in the context of his overall aesthetic it changes the way we hear and respond to them. Although you cant decipher the vocals (unless of course you understand the language) the track titles and packaging lay down his position and sympathies with Palestine, which doesnt exactly strip his samples of a 'voice' as such. Im' just riffing here, haven't really collected my own thoughts definitively on the matter. I know Muslimgauze is a bit of an oddball, which i why i thought to mention it here. Jace, hope you can post something on it, be very interested to hear your views.

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sizzlingauze - октомври 13 2006

I'm not overly familiar with Muslimgauze's work (RIP) but I think his project was interesting in it's singlemindedness and the fact that it was pretty clearly an 'ethnic fantasy' project. Anyone who did a lick of research would have learned quickly not to take him as an attempted 'voice from the arab street' but instead as someone looking in from outside with many layers of subjectivity enmeshed in the work.

Somehow the relentless singularity of his project makes it more interesting and 'valid' to me. Not that it was actually representative of the people he was sampling but I'd say he's a bit too far in to be accused of empty dilletantism.


And what I was trying to say last night, in agreeing with Bent's post before mine was so rudely deleted by technical blog ghosts: it matters a lot who, when and what you are when you start sampling. Some people do have more 'authority' in re-purposing cultural works then others, culture does usually belong to a group of people who share it, maintain it and pass it down through generations. For those of us who are coming in from outside (by virtue of our ethnicity, class background, musical history) the rules of engagement are different than from someone who is born into that culture. It doesn't mean that we are denied an opportunity for engagement but the bar for us is higher, the standards of behavior more stringent. When we're talking about something that could be regarded as cultural theft then the history (in this case hundreds of years of every kind of theft imaginable, including bodily) becomes pretty relevant. Basicallly it does make a difference who's stealing from who, just as we would make a difference between a kid who steals cars to joyride and Kenneth Lay.

My own attitude in my own work is basically if you're going to steal something, then steal the idea but not the actual sound. In the process of re-creating and re-purposing something new and interesting will hopefully arise to make the theft interesting. The imperfect nature of this kind of copying makes the process more like the organic, traditional process of influence passing and allows for mutation, corruption and change that straight copying of audio data limits.

In the case of vocals, if you feel the need to steal vocals to make something work, steal them in order to create the work but then replace them before marketing by re-recording.

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dwattsriot and the sam pulse players () (URL) - октомври 13 2006

Yes this thread is ace....lot�s of things coming out, all good, even if some of it hurts.
Timeblind...On the subject of
black artists that exaggerate their "blackness", I have been to Russia twice this year for gigs, and both times I have experinced..."I really like your music...I really like niggers." Or the words uttered by the millionare Hari Krishna promoter say to another of our crew when talking about rap "I like to rap, but I�m not a nigger."
This troubled me and continues to do so.
Who is to blame, the artists that consistently project the word around the world with the aid of record companies? Is this what 'realness' is? As you stated that's fucked up.
By constantly repeating the word nigger rappers are doing the KKK�s ideological work for them.
Just wanted to vent that, throw it in the air and see what comes back.
Anyway, back to see what Sam Pulse is playing with....Peace

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tigga blind (URL) - октомври 14 2006

Yes, in India I have been shocked to hear people say it like that. Tibetan monks even. They really have no idea how loaded the word is. I can just inform them that they shouldn't say it, and excuse them. I wouldn't be so troubled by it, they don't know these rules. Only twice in my life have I ever heard an actual racist say it.

anyway, much more important than condemning any artists words and images is praising and highlighting artists that speak amazing stories about their lives and who they are.

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timmyblind got no slogan (URL) - октомври 14 2006

let's not forget that dubstep is an instrumental genre. instrumental music serves a different purpose than vocal music � you can go deeper inside yourself while you listen because there is no distraction of a performer. there is no personality in front of you to pay attention to. the focus is on you, the listener; you become the music. its a different approach, its not performer-centric, its not voice-centric.

there are moments of voice, but they are supposed to be just flashes and spice, the same as in dub itself.

so, yes there is more distance to the voice in the limited vocal samples in dubstep. but its not a vocal genre, so of course the voice is more distant.

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geroyche () (URL) - октомври 14 2006

muslimgauze... as jace said, i'd better leave that topic for some other time too.
there is a quite critical article on him and his anti-semitic views by cf in the recent issue of the datacide magazine (http://datacide.c8.com/),not online, only in print.

i do not know anything about his production style or how he got his "ethnic" material (he has never been to the middle east), but i can quote him on sampling other people's records:
"I view samples as theft (...) by people with no ideas ideas of their own, these people should be taken to court and erased from view."

somehow i feel this discussion is shifting to an "unlicensed sampling is bad, if money is made off it" point of view. don't think i want to follow you there. nobody knows in advance if something will generate revenues. even if it does... i'd rather wear my negativeland "copyright violation squad" badge proudly and judge cases of sampling by creativity instead of legitimacy.

as for the point timeblind raised, black music keeping up the racial stereotypes. well yeah, that's what got jace excited about grime in the first place, that he felt it wasn't like that there. not sure i agree.
but in any way. i cannot decide ad hoc either what is "worse". white producers sampling the same old black voice snippets for spice or black artists creating an infinite pool of the same old stereotypic stuff.
market dictates.

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mr egg - ноември 13 2006

i know this might sound ignorant but i think you are reading too much into "earth a run red". the sample sounds good and is evocative of a feeling that coki probably felt fit the track really well. i don't percieve it as some backward jungle esque fetishism of the disembodied black voice. it just sounds and feels powerful - particularly as the tune is exciting and has a special vibe that is very modern in my opinion, even while it references the past.

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