I sort of agree with Remington in that it is annoying when people bang on about '88, second summer of love, the end of hooliganism and all that garbage (tell that to the carabinieri at Italia '90…) but given the choice I prefer irritating to terrifying and that feels like the ongoing story of modern times, perhaps because PC/Woke/whatever is rooted in a good place but can be preachy, pious in how it is communicated - which is the heart of all this: too many people mistaking the message with the way it was spread.
I’ve long thought about whether club culture should try and keep a distance from real life and sometimes you can’t help but be politicised by things elsewhere: discrimination, money, society… but music does need to retain some escapism, because art, expression, creativity, mindless techno is never gonna be 100% political… people need to unwind, disconnect, indulge fantasies
I guess the politics for me was the act of being involved at all in the first place, choosing an alternative outlet to high street hell, which even for someone as sad and suburban as me still felt like an act of defiance. Even for someone like me growing up, you were aware that vast sections of society disapproved and forever will.
What happens next is the big unknown. Are we entering a new post-disco sucks era, where the resistance - if a counter culture can still survive? - literally disappears into the shadows or will dissenters become louder than ever albeit in more subliminal and coded ways?
ultimately djs are entertainers. I don’t want to know the views of a white english or hgerman bloke in his 50s on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Keep that shit to yourself and mates, don’t broadcast it on social media, especially given that there is a lot of romanticism about how clubbing brought all the races together. It did to the extent that acid house and rave was all new, but clubland’s class/race system still remained.
I think the simplest explanation for why someone does two Nazi salutes to a crowd gathered to see the election of a president championed by Nazis is that he is a Nazi.
I kind of agree with him too don’t get me wrong… being an evangelist for the past is ultimately pointless-more that there are bigger fish to fry is all.
sure, no doubt about that, but when that smug superiority is used to prosecute young kids or entrench white domination of clubland I am not down with it at all.
History suggests that a shift to the right is often a breeding ground for creativity. Our ability to communicate globally these days in a matter of seconds gives me some hope…
it’s impossible to 100% separate culture and politics now though. it’s the constant elephant in the room. when people are defining you as an enemy, you’re forced to pick sides, much as Reagan politicised gay culture in the past.
but it is the type of people I’m criticising who are doing the demonisation and creating enemies. The right have their own version of wokeism, and I would say it’s much more in the ascendent than the left one, which is pretty much a dead horse.
Who are you referring to? public figures or the guy on YouTube suggesting that nothing has ever been better than Mr Kirk’s Nightmare by 4 Hero and how everything is shit these days?
lol, I would agree with the youtube guy. No I am referring to fairly respected djs in UK and continental clubland, I’m not going to name names but over the past year I’ve felt like it really is a whites only enclave and that people like me of a different colour aren’t welcome.
Not that I’m at all upset about it, it’s nothing new really, i just don’t get it. The world doesn’t revolve around house and techno. In fact clubs shouldn’t just revolve around house and techno.
They say you get more Conservative as you get older. Or if you’re Liz Truss, you get more Conservative the more you chong on the Far Right grift pipe.
I’ve become far more liberal with age. And fucking angry with it.
I like knowing who musicians/DJ’s are as people and what they do and don’t stand for. Of course it is possible to seperate art from the person and in reality I have to accept that perhaps not everyone I have looked up to or admired over the years has been blemish free.
I often think that it would be weird to have lived through acid house and all that at a formative age only to become a Tory in later life.
Also in the UK, probably elsewhere too, with the housing crisis the mechanism that turned people into Mail reading Tories - home ownership - is out of reach for so many now.
I think anyone who has a reasonably well-aligned moral compass does the same. Any ideological shift to the right shows a complete lack of critical thinking skills or just downright selfishness.
As far as music is concerned, I used to think it doesn’t need to convey an overtly or explicit political message - my view was always to allow the listener to derive their own interpretation,
However, given the events of the past 10 years I just don’t feel comfortable with that stance any more. After all, the entire dance music phenomenon is roooted in ideologies and marginalised elements of society who have historically had to fight damn hard to get the rights they have or had.
That being said, Billy Bragg over a 303 riff is not going to cut it in 2025. The manner in which we politicise our art, should we choose to do so, is going to be crucial if the aim is to reach a wider audience than any exisiting niche ‘fanbase’ who already aligh with your ideology anyway.