Injecting politics into techno

[innovine]

You could try publishing your music on YouTube, with the associated video containing whatever political footage or message you want to get across.

Lucky People Center have done this to good effect, even if its not quite techno. You might find inspiration in their work
youtu.be/IaPVyHnxAOY

[chava]

Lucky People Center have done this to good effect, even if its not quite techno

ahh, there was a name from the past I almost forgot. The 'Sundance' is probably THE hippie trance track of the 90s for me.

[innovine]

"international" is top notch too, only I couldn't find a link to the full thing. Worth a see if you can track it down!!

[chava]

but unlike Sweden and Germany the debate is pretty open and uncensored, so I doubt it will explode although who knows what will happen in the future.

Let me just chime in and say that in nearly all news publications, papers, open forums and TV for the last 30-50 years (and possibly longer) there have always been debate, every day regarding foreigners and immigrants. It's a modern classic myth that it's not ok to discuss things like that in Sweden while everyone have always discussed it and very aggressively as well. All right wing and nationalists have been proved that this have been the case over and over, obviously they never listen. However there have been troublesome racist branding (using the term wrongly and many occasions) frequently by the modern regressive left and neo-liberals on very loose and faulty terms to many people. Now we can move on with the discussion!

You might be right. Still I see the "alt-right" getting a hold in Sweden and I am not confident that this can be ignored or just laughed off.

Sorry for not sticking to the original topic!

[The_G]

They weren't exactly Black Panthers.

UR were pretty close to Black Panthers, actually. After Mills left, that is

[g3_d9]

i am disturbed by the idea of "injecting" anything into techno.

[The_G]

So my Concrete Island album was written just after the US election, in a state of...let's just say deep concern. It sort of gelled, conceptually, as a road trip through an abandoned city. Post-collapse, I mean.

For me that's really political. But someone else might hear it and get none of that.

[Mattias]

but unlike Sweden and Germany the debate is pretty open and uncensored, so I doubt it will explode although who knows what will happen in the future.

Let me just chime in and say that in nearly all news publications, papers, open forums and TV for the last 30-50 years (and possibly longer) there have always been debate, every day regarding foreigners and immigrants. It's a modern classic myth that it's not ok to discuss things like that in Sweden while everyone have always discussed it and very aggressively as well. All right wing and nationalists have been proved that this have been the case over and over, obviously they never listen. However there have been troublesome racist branding (using the term wrongly and many occasions) frequently by the modern regressive left and neo-liberals on very loose and faulty terms to many people. Now we can move on with the discussion!

You might be right. Still I see the "alt-right" getting a hold in Sweden and I am not confident that this can be ignored or just laughed off.

Sorry for not sticking to the original topic!

Your right on both accounts. There is a big "alt-right" movement here but it only appears bigger then it is due to many people just go with them to show dissatisfaction. It happened before. However, they way they handled it have been outrageous. Like you said, it can't be ignored or laughed off. They tried that unfortunately.

[Amøbe]

...well, you're not wrong - but we also just don't have that many truly marginalized groups in Denmark.

Some would say the immigrants, some would say the old, some would say the sick or disabled, some would say the homeless, some would say the displaced right-voting working class, some would say the less intelligent. And if you score on all categories and you score on the LGBT+ register as well you are marginalized.

I definitely didn't meant to say that there aren't marginalized groups in Denmark (my girlfriends parents are some of the turkish "guest workers" from the 70s, and we have clearly experienced some different prejudices!)

I just meant we don't really have large parallel societies with huge cultural stories as in the states (like the afrofuturistic roots, which Detroit techno more or less grew out of) - Denmark (or Scandinavia, for that matter) are by large very homogenic societies compared to other nations... So for lot of the more xenophobic parts of the danish society (I, too, think it's more that, than straight up racism - we don't have huge KKK groups or stuff like that in Denmark), they are also the less educated who are losing jobs (mainly because of automatization, but that's not really being discussed very much) and I think, that a huge portion of this group is extremely scared of change... and this should not by any means be read as a justification of the way they act or their view on other ethnicities!

[Mattias]

...well, you're not wrong - but we also just don't have that many truly marginalized groups in Denmark.

Some would say the immigrants, some would say the old, some would say the sick or disabled, some would say the homeless, some would say the displaced right-voting working class, some would say the less intelligent. And if you score on all categories and you score on the LGBT+ register as well you are marginalized.

I definitely didn't meant to say that there aren't marginalized groups in Denmark (my girlfriends parents are some of the turkish "guest workers" from the 70s, and we have clearly experienced some different prejudices!)

I just meant we don't really have large parallel societies with huge cultural stories as in the states (like the afrofuturistic roots, which Detroit techno more or less grew out of) - Denmark (or Scandinavia, for that matter) are by large very homogenic societies compared to other nations... So for lot of the more xenophobic parts of the danish society (I, too, think it's more that, than straight up racism - we don't have huge KKK groups or stuff like that in Denmark), they are also the less educated who are losing jobs (mainly because of automatization, but that's not really being discussed very much) and I think, that a huge portion of this group is extremely scared of change... and this should not by any means be read as a justification of the way they act or their view on other ethnicities!

I'd say this is very well put into words. Nice job

[chava]

I just meant we don't really have large parallel societies with huge cultural stories as in the states (like the afrofuturistic roots, which Detroit techno more or less grew out of) - Denmark (or Scandinavia, for that matter) are by large very homogenic societies compared to other nations... So for lot of the more xenophobic parts of the danish society (I, too, think it's more that, than straight up racism - we don't have huge KKK groups or stuff like that in Denmark), they are also the less educated who are losing jobs (mainly because of automatization, but that's not really being discussed very much) and I think, that a huge portion of this group is extremely scared of change... and this should not by any means be read as a justification of the way they act or their view on other ethnicities!

I'd say this is very well put into words. Nice job

Just remember it is not only the disenfranchised working class who increasingly are voting to the right. And, all things considered, the unemployment rate post-crisis in Northern Europe is really not that alarming. Also being afraid of change is not necessarily a bad thing, some people are just like that.

Interesting about the Afrofuturism angle; I always wondered how this really was thought of in Detroit - or if just is a "post hoc" conceptualizing done by journalists and writers.

[Vox Veteran]

I just meant we don't really have large parallel societies with huge cultural stories as in the states (like the afrofuturistic roots, which Detroit techno more or less grew out of) - Denmark (or Scandinavia, for that matter) are by large very homogenic societies compared to other nations... So for lot of the more xenophobic parts of the danish society (I, too, think it's more that, than straight up racism - we don't have huge KKK groups or stuff like that in Denmark), they are also the less educated who are losing jobs (mainly because of automatization, but that's not really being discussed very much) and I think, that a huge portion of this group is extremely scared of change... and this should not by any means be read as a justification of the way they act or their view on other ethnicities!

I'd say this is very well put into words. Nice job

Just remember it is not only the disenfranchised working class who increasingly are voting to the right. And, all things considered, the unemployment rate post-crisis in Northern Europe is really not that alarming. Also being afraid of change is not necessarily a bad thing, some people are just like that.

Interesting about the Afrofuturism angle; I always wondered how this really was thought of in Detroit - or if just is a "post hoc" conceptualizing done by journalists and writers.

Maybe have a read of Techno Rebels by Dan Sicko.

An accurate guide to the scene's development.

Also:

Reality Slap! by Neil Ollivierra

http://ambientmusicguide.com/wp-content ... y-Slap.pdf

I think about as first hand an account as you could hope for being written at the time by one of the producers themselves.

[[wesellboxes]]

Everything is political. As purposely not taking a political stance is in itself political ie opting out.

As for my own tracks, titles and samples are the obvious route but there is a conscious effort to reign that in and not get too 6th form. Using samples and elements as sound design and there's been a few tracks or even just jams that have came from just being pissed off. There's currently a lot going on in the UK (and the world) to be pissed off about at the moment.

[Amøbe]

I wrote a lengthy response the other day but got logged out... so just for the ones that are curious about this afrofuturism stuff.

It's a umbrella term, which was coined in the early 90s by Mark Dery to frame the specificity of black - especially african-american - culture that deals with speculating about the future (and if you want to go down a google loophole - most african-americans prefer the notion Black Speculative Arts... there's numerous reasons for this, but one of them is that Mark Dery is white, and part of the community around this field is against a white man framing black culture)

So a good question to start with is why are so many people interested in black sci-fi and futursim? One of them is that the culture surrounding african-amercians that speculate about the future is very different from that of classic pulp sci-fi (or big movie's like Star Wars), and those big ones are predominantly written by white people. The other thing is that having the future as an object of expression is very predominant in lots of african-american culture (short list of cultural persons that have used speculation about the future as part of their cultural marks: W. E. B. DuBois, Sun Ra, Stevie Wonder, George Clinton, OutKast, Janelle Monae).

So to go back to the first thing - how is afrofuturism differen't from Jules Verne (to take one). Well, there are different tropes you can follow.

One of the more publicly discussed ones are the one you see in Sun Ra. Ra was - besides pretty weird - telling a myth about how he was an alien that had arrived from Saturn (he departed the Earth again in 1993). Now the interesting thing about it is why a black man would take on a myth of being an alien. There's two answers to this - and they follow the same road. When the africans was taken as slaves, they lost their world and then arrived in what we now call America as literal Aliens. They didn't felt a cultural connection to this place and the one they had was left behind. Therefore taking on the role as an alien seemed fitting. But the part about their lost culture is a bit more complex (and it still has to do with them being aliens). The then now african-americans didn't have a past. They were so to speak without history, so to establish a history, they could go in another direction - to the future. So in Afrofuturism we're at the start of history, but they're still talking about the history (the future) as that's where there culture is. This also speaks to an idea, where the time here on earth is just a stop along the way (as we all know, the people of Africa aren't from the Earth, but arrived in very advanced spaceships that we now call for the Pyramides). So that's one trope the dealing with alienation and the loss of history... but that one doesn't have very much to do with techno (maybe except from Hieroglyphic Being and some of Mills' more conceptual works... there's probably more if you look).

Just to fart one out here in the middle - another classic trope is the one, where the aliens or the androids become a theme to speculate about ethics - will we treat them the way we treated the slaves? as subhumans?

Next one - the one where you can speak of techno as part of it. This one concerns technology. Now the roots of all math for instance are based in some principles founded in the western world - and they work great, and we have come along way with them! But the interesting part is that before western math was speeded up and was agreed upon over the world, there were other principles that math was based on in other parts of the world (now I can't be specific here, because I honestly doesn't really know what that means in reality! I think it has something to do with the way equations work, but I'm not sure), and some of the findings - especially concerned with astrology - that was done many years ago in Africa has turned out to be right (turned out in this case means when we got our western technology good enough to do measurements). This could possibly mean that in some scientific areas the african principles of math is superior to that of the western world.

So a part of the afrofuturistic scope is to think about what would the future look like, if it was based on african principles. Sometimes this comes out quite silly (as in George Clinton's Mothership, which fuels on funk), and other times it comes out VERY technical (as in academic/ethical papers about medicine and stuff), and then sometimes it comes fore in a way that - perhaps by accident - has some philosophical potentials. Here's where we get techno. Now first of all you could say they hacked black culture into a white technology - just by making it more funky. Then there's a perspective, where you could say they funkified (not my term!) the people, as in they used technology to make your butt become the booty (again not my term!) - I read this last part as, booty is a very strong part of black identity...

Now the reason why it's interesting to talk about techno under the umbrella Afrofuturism, is that they did make a very foresighting sound with elements that are very culturally black. They were also quite explicit about being very into sci-fi at the time - but they did it in a funky way that was bound up on a very specific culture.

Right now my brain died, I might get back to this later on - there's more and more litteraure in this field, but a classic is Kodwo Eshun's "More Brilliant than the Sun" (it hasn't been reprinted in many years - so go find the .pdf, if you don't want to sell your dearest drum machine!)

[Vox Veteran]

I wrote a lengthy response the other day but got logged out... so just for the ones that are curious about this afrofuturism stuff.

It's a umbrella term, which was coined in the early 90s by Mark Dery to frame the specificity of black - especially african-american - culture that deals with speculating about the future (and if you want to go down a google loophole - most african-americans prefer the notion Black Speculative Arts... there's numerous reasons for this, but one of them is that Mark Dery is white, and part of the community around this field is against a white man framing black culture)

So a good question to start with is why are so many people interested in black sci-fi and futursim? One of them is that the culture surrounding african-amercians that speculate about the future is very different from that of classic pulp sci-fi (or big movie's like Star Wars), and those big ones are predominantly written by white people. The other thing is that having the future as an object of expression is very predominant in lots of african-american culture (short list of cultural persons that have used speculation about the future as part of their cultural marks: W. E. B. DuBois, Sun Ra, Stevie Wonder, George Clinton, OutKast, Janelle Monae).

So to go back to the first thing - how is afrofuturism differen't from Jules Verne (to take one). Well, there are different tropes you can follow.

One of the more publicly discussed ones are the one you see in Sun Ra. Ra was - besides pretty weird - telling a myth about how he was an alien that had arrived from Saturn (he departed the Earth again in 1993). Now the interesting thing about it is why a black man would take on a myth of being an alien. There's two answers to this - and they follow the same road. When the africans was taken as slaves, they lost their world and then arrived in what we now call America as literal Aliens. They didn't felt a cultural connection to this place and the one they had was left behind. Therefore taking on the role as an alien seemed fitting. But the part about their lost culture is a bit more complex (and it still has to do with them being aliens). The then now african-americans didn't have a past. They were so to speak without history, so to establish a history, they could go in another direction - to the future. So in Afrofuturism we're at the start of history, but they're still talking about the history (the future) as that's where there culture is. This also speaks to an idea, where the time here on earth is just a stop along the way (as we all know, the people of Africa aren't from the Earth, but arrived in very advanced spaceships that we now call for the Pyramides). So that's one trope the dealing with alienation and the loss of history... but that one doesn't have very much to do with techno (maybe except from Hieroglyphic Being and some of Mills' more conceptual works... there's probably more if you look).

Just to fart one out here in the middle - another classic trope is the one, where the aliens or the androids become a theme to speculate about ethics - will we treat them the way we treated the slaves? as subhumans?

Next one - the one where you can speak of techno as part of it. This one concerns technology. Now the roots of all math for instance are based in some principles founded in the western world - and they work great, and we have come along way with them! But the interesting part is that before western math was speeded up and was agreed upon over the world, there were other principles that math was based on in other parts of the world (now I can't be specific here, because I honestly doesn't really know what that means in reality! I think it has something to do with the way equations work, but I'm not sure), and some of the findings - especially concerned with astrology - that was done many years ago in Africa has turned out to be right (turned out in this case means when we got our western technology good enough to do measurements). This could possibly mean that in some scientific areas the african principles of math is superior to that of the western world.

So a part of the afrofuturistic scope is to think about what would the future look like, if it was based on african principles. Sometimes this comes out quite silly (as in George Clinton's Mothership, which fuels on funk), and other times it comes out VERY technical (as in academic/ethical papers about medicine and stuff), and then sometimes it comes fore in a way that - perhaps by accident - has some philosophical potentials. Here's where we get techno. Now first of all you could say they hacked black culture into a white technology - just by making it more funky. Then there's a perspective, where you could say they funkified (not my term!) the people, as in they used technology to make your butt become the booty (again not my term!) - I read this last part as, booty is a very strong part of black identity...

Now the reason why it's interesting to talk about techno under the umbrella Afrofuturism, is that they did make a very foresighting sound with elements that are very culturally black. They were also quite explicit about being very into sci-fi at the time - but they did it in a funky way that was bound up on a very specific culture.

Right now my brain died, I might get back to this later on - there's more and more litteraure in this field, but a classic is Kodwo Eshun's "More Brilliant than the Sun" (it hasn't been reprinted in many years - so go find the .pdf, if you don't want to sell your dearest drum machine!)

Nice one, Amøbe

Very interesting.

Again, makes me think straight away of the opening track on Nighttime World Vol 2 ' Black Hollywood' with the Richard Pryor stand up piece about black people making sci-fi films and then they'll be in the future too.

Poignant stuff indeed.

[Amøbe]

Nice one, Amøbe

Very interesting.

Again, makes me think straight away of the opening track on Nighttime World Vol 2 ' Black Hollywood' with the Richard Pryor stand up piece about black people making sci-fi films and then they'll be in the future too.

Poignant stuff indeed.

You're welcome I will then check out that opening track! I haven't heard it before, so thank you for mentioning that.

[chava]

Afrofuturism..

Thanks for this summation as I was mostly familiar with the term through the 'Drexicyian mythology' popularized by Simon Reynolds (which took it from Eshun). Neo-mythologies are always interesting and in this case perhaps also useful for setting up a framework to analyze Detroit Techno. Still I remain a bit sceptical to the idea of over-emphazing the cultural impact of ethnicity as this very quickly degenerates into some sort of identity politics and group identity which is currently spreading like cancer all over. Exemplified in the abhorrent delegimitation of Mark Dery as you described.

Paradoxically I would say a a lot of Detroit Techno back then (as in the 80-90s, sadly not much interesting comes from the D anymore) underplayed the group identity element and instead had quite an individual voice. I would claim that Contrary the european variant often turned out to be more like an effective assembly line production sublimating the individuality of the artist-producer to the then current genres du jour using endless internal genre-references (witness early jungle/d&b, hard-acid, trance, rave). Lots of cookie cutter stuff or 'mindless techno bollocks' as it was always described in the mocking UK anti-rave media at the time. But that was in a way liberating too and maybe the most revolutionary aspect of the rave movement; suppressing the individual to the machine (more than the crowd). But ultimately this in my view just ends in nihilism and self-destruct or even in some kin of totalitarian fascist pleasure prison - something that was heavily discussed and theorized in the german media at the time of Love Parade and all that. See Achim Szepanski (Head of Force inc/Mille Plateaux for this - he is some character and still very active in the academic world)

Oh, well got a bit on a tangent here. Interesting topic, though!

And currently listening to this record relevant for the topic - the first two PW records are rough diamonds in the Detroit techno canon: https://www.discogs.com/Psychic-Warfare ... ease/35054.

[Vox Veteran]

Afrofuturism..

Thanks for this summation as I was mostly familiar with the term through the 'Drexicyian mythology' popularized by Simon Reynolds (which took it from Eshun). Neo-mythologies are always interesting and in this case perhaps also useful for setting up a framework to analyze Detroit Techno. Still I remain a bit sceptical to the idea of over-emphazing the cultural impact of ethnicity as this very quickly degenerates into some sort of identity politics and group identity which is currently spreading like cancer all over. Exemplified in the abhorrent delegimitation of Mark Dery as you described.

Paradoxically I would say a a lot of Detroit Techno back then (as in the 80-90s, sadly not much interesting comes from the D anymore) underplayed the group identity element and instead had quite an individual voice. I would claim that Contrary the european variant often turned out to be more like an effective assembly line production sublimating the individuality of the artist-producer to the then current genres du jour using endless internal genre-references (witness early jungle/d&b, hard-acid, trance, rave). Lots of cookie cutter stuff or 'mindless techno bollocks' as it was always described in the mocking UK anti-rave media at the time. But that was in a way liberating too and maybe the most revolutionary aspect of the rave movement; suppressing the individual to the machine (more than the crowd). But ultimately this in my view just ends in nihilism and self-destruct or even in some kin of totalitarian fascist pleasure prison - something that was heavily discussed and theorized in the german media at the time of Love Parade and all that. See Achim Szepanski (Head of Force inc/Mille Plateaux for this - he is some character and still very active in the academic world)

Oh, well got a bit on a tangent here. Interesting topic, though!

And currently listening to this record relevant for the topic - the first two PW records are rough diamonds in the Detroit techno canon: https://www.discogs.com/Psychic-Warfare ... ease/35054.

I think safe to say Black Nation are next in line after UR for upfront politicization of the label ethos, be it track/release titles in this instance.

I do think that the the drive for Detroit Techno's identity at the turn of the 80's/90's is very real. It breaks my heart to see all the surnames of those producers, Mills, Hood, Banks, Dulan, Young, etc. All slave master surnames that those families were originally forced to adopt.

Always a big fan of Force Inc back in the day but unaware of how politicized Achim was. I guess keeping company like Alec Empire it figures.

Will have to investigate and many thanks for the heads up.

I guess for real politicization of electronic music where the message was equal to the music in Europe you have to go back a decade into the eighties with various of the industrial acts.

[chava]

I think safe to say Black Nation are next in line after UR for upfront politicization of the label ethos, be it track/release titles in this instance.

I do think that the the drive for Detroit Techno's identity at the turn of the 80's/90's is very real. It breaks my heart to see all the surnames of those producers, Mills, Hood, Banks, Dulan, Young, etc. All slave master surnames that those families were originally forced to adopt.

Always a big fan of Force Inc back in the day but unaware of how politicized Achim was. I guess keeping company like Alec Empire it figures.

Will have to investigate and many thanks for the heads up.

I guess for real politicization of electronic music where the message was equal to the music in Europe you have to go back a decade into the eighties with various of the industrial acts.

Szepanski was in a very politized industrial act from the 80s. Here's a lot of info about the roots of the label and some of the artists : http://www.dreh-buch.com/2014/04/post-13/.

I can't say I agree with their position (post-structuralism critique of capitalism), but interesting nevertheless.

[Vox Veteran]

I think safe to say Black Nation are next in line after UR for upfront politicization of the label ethos, be it track/release titles in this instance.

I do think that the the drive for Detroit Techno's identity at the turn of the 80's/90's is very real. It breaks my heart to see all the surnames of those producers, Mills, Hood, Banks, Dulan, Young, etc. All slave master surnames that those families were originally forced to adopt.

Always a big fan of Force Inc back in the day but unaware of how politicized Achim was. I guess keeping company like Alec Empire it figures.

Will have to investigate and many thanks for the heads up.

I guess for real politicization of electronic music where the message was equal to the music in Europe you have to go back a decade into the eighties with various of the industrial acts.

Szepanski was in a very politized industrial act from the 80s. Here's a lot of info about the roots of the label and some of the artists : http://www.dreh-buch.com/2014/04/post-13/.

I can't say I agree with their position (post-structuralism critique of capitalism), but interesting nevertheless.

Cool. Nice one, Chava

Just read the first couple of paragraphs and very interesting reading straight away.

Thomas Koner and Marcus Gabler quotes are both hilarious too

Will read in full tonight and feedback following.