This was written by a friend who's a free-lance correspondent for a (South
African) magazine called SL : this was posted on their on-line site and had my
jaw hanging open :-) I'd be curious to hear other people's opinions on the topic.
http://sly.co.za/flashbaby_060999.asp
Monday, 6 September
The Body Electric
Miles Keylock
Flashbaby ponders just how people engage with music
It's no revelation that I have a fundamental problem with the way people seem
(not) to listen to music these days. It's been a major thorn in my proverbial hide
that so-called dance music genres - music that's sole function is as a
commodity which primarily allows people to dance - have such a following in
this country.
Perhaps it's not really a question of insisting that one listen to the music, now
is it? Isn't it more an issue of how - or whether at all - people actually engage
with the music. Be this cerebrally - a desire for an escape from the stimulus of
the body, or viscerally - a search for transcendence through the body itself.
Perhaps this is one reason why fans of dance music are only too willing to
tolerate self-indulgent and exaggerated sets from DJs.
Don't let anyone try and tell you otherwise, dancing to house music or drum
and bass or trance is about the individual losing contact with the body, literally
getting out of their heads. Ultimately dance music is not about the DJ - who, if
anything serves merely as a conman, a visage, a cover version of the author.
And don't listen to your friends whining on about how "electronic music is so
cool because it's about the death of the author and the search for a new
signifier confronted with the pre-millennium realities of this post-modern era."
Bollocks! God is not a DJ! And a DJ will never be God.
Despite their posturing endeavours there is no way that listening to a DJ spin a
few discs or a couple of records can have as meaningfully a corporeal effect as
watching a Nude Girls, a Groinchurn, a Nine, or a Fetish live onstage. These
people are gods!
The appeal of rock music is that it speaks precisely to the body. It's about
embracing the fleshly textures of the music in all it's potential carnality: it's
about sex, booze, drugs and rock'n roll. All you have to do is listen and hear.
Whether you dance or not isn't an end in itself. By contrast, dance music is
simply about denial of the body. It's about a new age, smart drinking, asexual
looking, pill-popping paranoia of the flesh.
The next time you go to a drum and bass club, just have a look at where the
kids are. Deep inside their own heads and way up their own arses. I'm sorry,
that's certainly not listening to the music. 'Cos if anything, dancing with and
inside yourself seems kinda sad to me. Who are you communicating with? The
DJ? I don't think so. They're definitely playing the music for themselves.
Perhaps the beats then? Oh, please. I think not. All you're doing is sitting in a
corner, sucking your thumb. And if that's engaging with the music, then I'm
happy to be an old bastard who still lives with his mother.