As an amateur cultural observer (critic would sound too pretentious) I have to notice that Free Jazz, Punk, and Underground Hip-Hop face similar situations.
But first,
Punk…
is quite dead. in fact it was pretty close to being dead 20 years ago, though in the strange way that forms of cultural rebellion do retain some life beyond the dead, it keeps kicking. This is actually a slight lie, and as we’ll cover soon, there are some interesting things going on with Punk.
Underground Hip-Hop faces a similar situation as Punk and Hardcore, with many artists and acts churning out endless clichéd repetition of established forms, or established themes, with less creative ferment and a desire to simply become famous.
This isn’t always the case, there are some interesting underground Hip Hop acts, every local scene has one or two MC’s of talent and note (I refuse to dredge out the pretentious ’emcee’)
Free Jazz has sort of become an artistic ghetto, and an excuse to simply play with low-fi recorded skronk, so atonal as to not only lack a key or scale, but in undisciplined fiddling around on a broadly conceived chromatic scale, producing sounds that seem simply not to fit any broadly defined idea of a musical sound. I like this, atonal noise makes me perk up and sometimes I’ll just turn on off-tune AM stations and listen to the static.
But listening to people trying to, over and over again, marry Sun-Ra to Napalm Death simply grows old after a while. Some experiments in dub like manipulations and the marriage of many Free Jazz acts to other noise and Industrial circles may produce interesting material and artists in time to come.
I am noticing a new wave of hardcore bands, sometimes called metalcore, but listening to them I really don’t hear the metal at all. I think metalcore is just a sloppy marketing term, back in the 80’s they used to call “metalcore” crossover thrash. There are some interesting acts out there like Dark Day Dawning, or Purity’s Failure, or – of course- the now totally clichéd Poison the Well, about whom little more will be said.
Here is one thing that I find interesting is the emergence of a mix of electronica gabber and deconstructed happy hardcore, a sort of twisted rave music, with a punk aesthetic and attitude.
Realicide Youth Records, a small DIY label in Cincinnati consisting of several extreme projects, including an electronic noise band, Realicide, an occasional guitar based grindcore act, a couple of rather twisted DJ’s, a deconstructed Rap MC, and other things that defies classification, is the closest thing to real punk I’ve seen in almost 2 decades. I’m sure that statement will piss some people off. Cincinnati has an interesting experimental electronic, noise and Industrial scene, including other such luminaries as C. Spencer Yeh, Ron Orovitz’s various projects, and many other unconventional and creative explorers at the boundaries of music.
There are still local hardcore scenes that evolved from the late 80s (Washington DC is a good example, New York as well) whose music displays authenticity, and some of the later new wave of hardcore bands (like Poison the Well) have some interesting fire behind them, but I think that if Punk as an overarching attitude of rebellion against artistic modes and commercial norms has any future, it’s not in Crusty kids churning out stuff that sounds like Discharge, Crass and The Exploited, but in creative urban kids taking electronics and abusing them in a DIY environment coming up with something so new and strange it defies easy classification.
Electro: Electro is more of a European thing, that said, there are some interesting electro acts out there who defy genre classification, and even who display somewhat of a punk like attitude as far as a defiant rejection of, and opposition to, music industry norms. I won’t discuss it much further because it’s discussed to death in other quarters.
At the end of the day, my opinion is that Western culture obsession with popular music and artistic expression borders on neurosis, and most new and original forms are quickly snatched up by corporate establishments for re-packaging.
Teenage rebellion sub-culture and the romance of the unconventional and bohemian is one of those themes that for almost 200 years has simply given a safe outlet for social pressures. I mean, step back and look at how conforming most non-conformists are. Beyond a few who set their own path and trail, you have millions who ape a neo-tribal lifestyle, a dress, piercings, mode of rejection of communal norms, and pre-packaged radical politics because they feel the need to rebel and not conform but cannot articulate it, so others articulate it for them.
Realicide are guys who step outside of the norm and set their own path and trail, and who live their art. This isn’t to engage in literary fellatio, it is simply my respect for them.
I respect their attitude and approach greatly. They are more punk than punk, and their DIY attitude reminds me of the creative ferment that characterized labels like Dischord Records in the80s and early 90s. Anyone who wants to see the future of Punk, may see it in the evolution of Realicide.
As for legions of others simply doing the scene, and finding some mammalian warmth in clustering around others who look talk and act like them, this isn’t non-conformity. But it is human, so very human, you see we seek to belong to those who are like us and share our values. It’s a very natural thing, only a few people seem cursed or blessed to perpetually blaze their own trails and they end up, by stint of irony, leading other herds whether they like it or not.
Realicide are such trail blazers, expect many imitators in the future, but none will match the original. If the sound of Buicks being crushed at high volume while you are being tasered is bearable to your aesthetic senses, then give Realicide a listen or better yet catch them live, they shine live, and also catch their members, like Jim Swill, or Mavis Concave, or Evolve’s deconstructed Hip Hop, doing their own thing.
Many cities have similar artists and scenes brewing, when I was in Vancouver I noticed some interesting acts brewing in Van. Look around and I’m sure you will find, in marginal spaces, interesting people doing interesting things with sound that defy the safe and bourgeois definition of “art.”
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You are in Ohio? Do you know “Roots Records” or “Roots Hi Power”? They put out some awesome reggae mixes.
Yeah, over in Columbus if I recall.
There’s some good reggae stuff going on here and there in Ohio. The Wailer’s also float back and forth through here. Never understood why Ohio got so much reggae action, but it’s a cool thing.
By an odd cosmic coincidence, I have a friend who played keyboards, synth, for Burning Spear for a number of years.
You can see him in a couple of scenes here, white guy with long hair. Great musician, and one of the most down to earth man I’ve ever met in my life. He’s the barrista of the area’s oldest coffeehouse, name’s Jay. The guy still looks almost the same after all these years
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJBxunQk6-Y
Have you seen this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtU3m2M1Ivs
It figures.
Not only does Stella get her groove on, but Susan does as well.
There are certain stereotypes of the traveling Western female for a reason…
But Western sex tourists, male and female, are nothing new.
Of course with things like this, it’s no wonder that the HBD boys get their pants in a bundle. And of course, many Western men were doing it before their women folk. It’s all predictable, remove the affluence and we have another picture.
Very interesting.
Most human anxieties boil down to sex, who gets it, who doesn’t. And frankly modern consumerist based cultures encourages a hyper-attention to matters of sex, resulting in compulsions and the inability to integrate such things into a sane and stable life style and family structure. Why even try when you can buy the “affections” (or cock and vagina) of native boys, or native girls – or both if one see’s fit?
The Arabs and Desis who come to “study” in the USA, Canada, Australia, UK and Europe are also a type of “sex tourist”.
After trying to get laid by as many non-Arab and non-Desi women as possible and frequenting strip clubs, their parents put their “bio-data” on shaadi.com and muslimmatch.com and other sites to find their good little sons a good, chaste, submissive, homely*, Arab/Desi wife/slave back home.
*”homely” means “domesticated” in desispeak, not “plain”
You make a very good point. Of course the other side are Arab and Desi female “sex tourist” types. Iranian girls, in particular, seem particularly open to exploring American men..
It always cuts both ways, again, it simply depends on which side of the fence your eyes are focusing on. Humans are remarkably consistent no matter.
Sex tourism, “tasting the native flesh” as soon as one is away from the prying eyes of one’s own people, seems to be a general human trait.
I’ve known hundreds of Arab and Desi guys throughout the Western world, but mainly in Ohio, New York, Washington, London, and a few other places I’ve lived, or passed through.
I have to admit, there is truth in what you speak. There are indeed guys like you say.
I think that you are highly, exaggerating the degree to which this may be the case, but I’ve observed some player types slutting it up like this – some African guys as well, in particular a few smoother guys from Kenya and Nigeria who, interestingly enough, little white co-ed girls found magically attractive. High quality upper class girls, in University anyway. That was years ago.
On the other hand – I’ve also seen a few guys who sincerely fell in love with Western women, got together with them, even married them, tried to make things work, and due to cultural differences their lives, or even both partners lives, became living hells.
I personally saw for years one very good friend literally bending over backwards trying to make a relationship work with a white girl only to have her treat him extremely badly. I knew both individuals, and can say without a doubt he had some personality faults that contributed.But he loved her, and tried the best within the limits of his cultural programming, she just grew increasingly to almost despise him. But unlike her, he actually seemed to try to make effort and put something into it.
In many of these cases I see white girls with certain personality quirks and expectations expecting to be constantly entertained simply growing bored. In some cases, I see girls flagrantly cheating on the guy, and with Arabs in particular, nothing can be more of a low blow to his honor. Also consider that guys who come from a traditional background getting together with middle class or lower class white girls who can’t even cook when they meet, and who spend a substantial degree of time eating out and feeding their kids fast foods, well obviously these are two individuals who are not compatible with each other.
So you see, it cuts both ways. What one notices is a function of what one is focused on, when one shifts the eyes in a different direction or angle one notices other interesting things.
Sometimes the problems only come about when it comes to children – I’ve seen perfect model couples, very much in love, suddenly become war zones, because of either the white woman’s resistance to his child rearing norms, or the desi or arab man’s resistance to her norms, or both of their fears of the influence of the other’s norms acting on their child.
Of course I have seen white girls pumped, used for sex, falling in love with some dark handsome foreigner, and then dumped as unsuitable wife material, by the guy who, well, does what you have said.I have seen women horribly emotionally and sexually used up by a few guys, to be thrown away for a “good wife” from back home.
I have witnessed both occur.
I have not seen Arabs do this any where near the degree as some other guys from the east, but I have seen it without a doubt.
But I have also seen Western women going out of their way to make the guy’s lives hell. Part of it, of course, may just be bad choices of mates. I know many white guys whose lives have been made hell through malicious sociopathic women. But I won’t blame all white girls for their evil sisters. I’ve known many blakc guys in the same picture, but again I won’t blame all black girls. I’ve known white, and black, girls whose own lives were made hell through malicious self absorbed and insane men of their own race, or of the other race. I’ve met white girls who only dated black guys because of the way in which their own men treated them.
I’ve known a few black girls who only dated white, or at least non-black, guys because of the way their own men treated them.
And so on, infinite variety.
It really goes both ways, the meeting of east and west, two different worlds. Blaming it all on the guys is at the risk of your sounding disingenuous. It goes both ways. In many cases it’s the man’s wrongdoing, in many cases more than one might want to admit, however, it’s the woman’s wrongdoing, or her freaking out, pushing the guy up against the wall, emotionally, growing demanding, shrill, in some cases just goes out and bangs other men, or does some other strange thing.
There is the guy who tries to make it work but then gives up on Western women in general and decides that the only good wife material are women from back home. There is the guy who really is only here to chase white girls skirts all day long, and then go back home to get a nice homely wife, and then there are guys who simply avoid the local women and are just here to study and work, and marry from back home, and are dedicated to their wives, then there are the guys who are not looking for love here, but meet a local western girl, falls in love, and it actually works out. One of my best friend’s department head is a white German woman married to an Indian guy. Beautiful marriage, it’s worked well for 20 some years, and they are now almost in their 60s. I know a Syrian guy who has been married to a White girl from the midwest almost 30 years, wonderful marriage. I know a very observant Muslim, who is Egyptian and has been married to a girl from a Jewish background, for decades. Great marriage, they get along wonderfully.
The world is full of all types. There are rules, exceptions to rules, and things that defy rules, and all things in between.
“You make a very good point. Of course the other side are Arab and Desi female “sex tourist” types. Iranian girls, in particular, seem particularly open to exploring American men.”
Iranians are insulted if you consider them anything other than “Persian”.
I’ve seen all types of intercultural relationships and marriages myself. Most of them have not worked out. Interracial is one thing, it can work if the two people share a similar cultural and religious background. Intercultural is an entirely different species and mostly does not work when the cultures are at odds with each other.
“You make a very good point. Of course the other side are Arab and Desi female “sex tourist” types. Iranian girls, in particular, seem particularly open to exploring American men.”
Iranians are insulted if you consider them anything other than “Persian”.
I’ve seen all types of intercultural relationships and marriages myself. Most of them have not worked out. Interracial is one thing, it can work if the two people share a similar cultural and religious background. Intercultural is an entirely different species and mostly does not work when the cultures are at odds with each other.