On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, grievous iv - gymkata! wrote:
quoted 13 lines On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, Kent Williams wrote:
>
> On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, Kent Williams wrote:
> > 'Intelligent' D&B
> > (which as near as I can tell is D&B any time white people are involved,
> > which smacks of racism to me).
>
> this last comment has been made before and it makes me wonder - how the
> hell am i supposed to know (or care) if they're black or white or chinese
> or whatever? out of the past 20 12"s i've bought, not _one_ has a
> picture of the artist on it...
>
> i think it's a weird thing to bring up, i guess. i have no idea what
> race witchman, t.power, squarepusher, etc are, and i could care less.
Let me clarify, since it seems to have raised an issue that can flare
into a pointless thread:
I like the stuff that's called "Intelligent" but the tag bugs me. What
makes it more intelligent than the music to which it is theoretically
being contrasted?
It seems to me that a lot of the intelligent D&B really is a step
removed from the originators, and the fact that it's coming from
people like Aphex Twin, Orbital, Squarepusher, yadda yadda makes it
more accessible to people who are not into the original jungle scene.
And more of those guys are white than the originators.
It feels to me that it recapitulates the scene in the 50's where black
artists were recording rock and roll records, which were covered by
white artists who made it safe for radio.
Is there a real racial bias going on here? I don't know. As near as
I can tell, techno, jungle, IDM, etc parties are a lot more easy going
racially than other scenes, at least in the US -- perhaps even more so
in the UK. I'm not accusing anyone on IDM in the least.
When it comes to stuff like that, don't look over your shoulder for the
PC police, but think about language and words when you use them. And
the idea of 'Intelligent' jungle just bugs me. Jungle didn't start
out stupid, and then get colonized by a bunch of smarter techno-boffins,
and to use the term is a big diss to the originators.
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