“Records like ‘Promised Land’ were more than just enjoyable sounds,” says Chicago house icon Roy Davis Jr when asked if dance music has lost its meaning. “They told you stories about worlds you didn’t know, which is not something you could say about many new house releases.”
Dance music doesn’t need to do anything more than make people dance. That’s fine. But to its detractors, house music – dance music in general – is brainless and bombastic body music that means literally nothing. It’s background noise to a night of getting drunk and high, dancing badly, then aggressively trying to score with the opposite sex before lights up at 2am.
Sure, everyone likes a senseless banger at the right moment, but how many more times can we get excited by a track that asks us to put our hands up, spread the love or get funky? Where have all the proper vocalists gone? Where are the protest lyrics or even the faintest whiffs of social awareness? Do people even care about that any more? Like pop music, house music now seems more concerned with the self than the social.
Of course, times have changed. The musical and political landscape in 2014 is very different to that from which house music emerged in the early 1980s. Back then house music brought together people of all races, genders and sexualities under one roof. Life for minority groups – the creators and early adapters of house – was a harder hustle than it is now; there was less acceptance, diversity and tolerance. But it’s those circumstances that brought people together, that gave us tracks like Joe Smooth’s ‘Promised Land’ or Ce Ce Rogers’ ‘Someday’and attempted to engender a more positive outlook on life.
Sure, they may sound a little cheesy now, but the messages in the music actually meant something and today, listening back, they still give us an insight into the state of the world at that time. When we look back at 2014’s top 100 deep house tunes 25 or 50 years from now, what the fuck will it tell us about life in the early 21st century? You’d be forgiven for thinking all the world’s ills had been put right, that everyone got on with everyone else and that life was something akin to a rose-tinted, Carlsberg-sponsored utopia. Obviously, that’s not the case. Take one glance down your Facebook feed and it’ll be littered with politically charged arguments, social campaigns and loudmouth disapprovals of this or that new government scheme. Dissent isn’t dead in 2014, activism hasn’t disappeared, but you won’t find them in house music. Why not?
“If you lived in the USA in the 80s as a black gay man, you may well have had a tough time from both your family and the outside world,” says Secretsundaze founder and revered house DJ Giles Smith. “If you look at interviews with regulars at the Paradise Garage they talk very passionately and with a lot of conviction about how important it was for them to go to a place where they could be themselves, be free and celebrate who they were. I’m sure this feeling informed some of the vocals back then. There is no doubt that these people are less marginalised now and that the world is quite a different place in 2014.”
Chicago DJ and producer Amir Alexander offers another view, suggesting that the globalisation of dance music has played a part. “The house and techno art forms have grown and left their place of origin. As more and more people who were not part of the original demographic – myself included – gained access to it, the original template began to mutate in order to be more a part of the new environments it found itself in. Perfect examples would be Jersey garage and gospel house, polished NYC styles like Masters At Work, raw Chicago sounds and Detroit techno. They’re all regional variants on a universal theme.”
So why, then, in these über-connected, hyper-aware times in which we live, are social messages not permeating house music? You could argue that modern day house music has been appropriated by the middle classes – perhaps even the European middle classes – who don’t face the same kind of social inequalities. Or you could argue that dance music is now only an outlet for weekend escapism. The obvious counter-arguement is that once everyone heads back from the club, chat inevitably turns to quasi-philosophical and religious debate, so it’s not like dance music fans are wholly averse to real world issues. Maybe it’s down to the drugs? Take an E and you’ll have a new and deep-found love for your fellow human. Do a line of ketamine and you’ll retreat so far into your own psyche that the rest of the world could quite happily go fuck itself without you even noticing.
Part of the reason, you have to suspect, that electronic music today is more about form and the functional than meaning and message is the modern mindset: we’re all a lot more self-conscious than we were. We have to be, with every facet of our lives on show on social media and forever recorded in the digital libraries of Google HQ. What’s more, no one wants to be told what to think, everyone is their own free spirit and who are you to be telling me shit?
Should dance music be more politicised, more socially aware? “I think there’s a fine line,” says James Teej, a modern-day dance music singer-songwriter and part of the Canadian My Favorite Robot crew. “Some music definitely has a strong social and political component, but I prefer to keep that a little bit below the lines and not be so upfront, as it can alienate people and take away from some people’s enjoyment of the music if it’s too overtly filled with messages.”
Roy Davis Jr, another Windy City native who has been involved in countless vocal house tracks that are much more aware than your average, reckons authenticity is also key. “Well, I always say, if you’re writing from the heart, then it really was meant to be said or spoken. I have written some songs that were about what certain friends or family members have gone through, so at the end of the day I can say that it was a situation that affected me and therefore made me write about it. In the end, even if it’s one person that you may have reached with your art, that’s ok. You have touched someone hopefully in a good way, so your job is done.”
Teej also argues that artists can and should draw on more than their personal experiences to inform their art: “If you’re writing music with an experiential focus, then yes, to have authenticity you probably should sing about stuff that affects you. But let’s not forget that music is about storytelling as well, and if you feel as connected to something fictional as you do to something that you’ve lived and experienced, who is to say you can’t reinterpret that in the music?”
The art of storytelling, as Teej puts it, is an important factor. It’s not just socio-political messages that dance music generally lacks in 2014, but any sort of narrative at all. Partly that’s down to a trend away from vocal tracks in recent years. Instrumental music fulfils its own function, but in terms of overt literal meaning it’s hard to get far without lyrics. Someone who has very much bucked the trend against vocals is Seven Davis Jr. His breakout hit was the vocal-led ‘One’, and the fact it stands out as an exception to the norm proves how rare a track with singable lyrics actually is in 2014. “Even singers in the pop world have been fooled by reality TV and they have no clue as to what route to take to gain artistic freedom of expression,” says Amir Alexander, touching on the point that music, even in wider terms, seems ever less politically charged than in the days of Bob Dylan or Marvin Gaye, or even the more recent likes of Rage Against The Machine. “They’re who we need to attract – more Seven Davis Jrs defecting from pop is what we need.”
“The pre-internet days made it easier for artists to discover the underground and their place in it,” Alexander continues. “When the scene is more diverse and democratic we don’t have this problem of homogeneity and conformity. Community, self-accountability and unabashed creativity need to come back into fashion and then we can really get to the business of advancing the art form.”
“The music industry is guided by a lot of artificiality,” adds Teej. “It always has been and always will be. It’s a part of a grander societal misdirection happening in the world today to keep people from being too upset with its current state. I’m not sure people talking about ‘popping bottles’ really are that aware of what’s going on in the world, nor do I think they even care. That apathy is what artists like myself despise, and is the thing we have to try and break with material that has a more positive message.”
Clearly, Teej is someone who feels a responsibility towards his audience, or maybe just towards himself: a responsibly to use his voice for good, or at least to use it for something more than ad-libbing about champagne. The problem is, it seems he’s in the minority, because nowadays fewer people than ever want to stick their neck out and sing about something out of the ordinary. “I think all music has a responsibility to mankind,” says Roy Davis Jr “There’s music for sorrow, there’s music with a positive message or there’s just music to make you dance and be happy. But the political side helps open eyes to something that may be going on in the world that people never may have realised.” In a recent interview with Resident Advisor, the Uzuri label and agency boss Lerato Khathi echoed the sentiments. “I strongly believe that being an artist or a public figure comes with responsibility. You owe it to your supporters and audience to promote diversity and tolerance for the greater good of the world.”
Finding a way to do this in a palatable fashion may be the biggest challenge nowadays. “Too much political posturing, or too obvious messaging, will put some people off,” says Teej. “There are many social ills that could benefit for having a little light shed on them, of course,” Alexander adds, “but to do it just to do it serves no purpose. And anyway, you don’t see too much of it right now because that is now where our collective head is: as a scene and movement, it’s quite difficult to discern if there’s any true longing for social change right now (or artistic evolution for that matter). With the exception of a few rays of light, we seem to be stagnating in triple-stage darkness at the moment.”
“It’s hard to say that electronic music should be more socially or politically aware,” says Giles Smith. “An advocate of this might say that it could be a way to reach young people who may not respond to traditional forms of media – who may not switch on the news or read the paper or have awareness – but who might pay attention to dance music. On the other hand, it’s also about release, positivity and having fun. Ultimately, who cannot be inspired by positive messages, especially when it’s put with really great music? If the music is dope and there’s a great message, then that’s a truly potent force – look at the more intelligent forms of hip-hop – but I don’t think it’s that evident in dance music today.”
Vocals are not always en vogue – it would be hard to imagine an abstract minimal affair from 2008 with a rousing vocal on it – but maybe it’s impossible to get far without them; there’s a limit to the extent you can promote a social message while making instrumental music. When good vocal tracks do come along – think Seven Davis Jr once more – people generally get behind them. For Giles Smith, primarily a house DJ, though, they remain an important aspect of any set. “Ideally a vocal has strong lyrical content and actually sounds great – that’s the perfect situation. But if it just sounds good and the lyrics are a bit meaningless it wouldn’t stop me from playing it. Indeed, sometimes the voice just becomes another instrument, sound or texture. There was a very golden time for vocals in the mid 90s with MAW, Blaze and singers like Arnold Jarvis, Cassio Ware, Robert Owens, Jocelyn Brown and Martha Wash, but now I really do find it much harder to find good vocal house tracks in that vein.”
Robert Owens, of course, is still one of the most prominent vocalists of the day, but it must be said that his longevity is beginning to show in a lack of originality. So where do modern writers find inspiration? For James Teej, “my travels and life’s experience. Stories and memories of love, loss, and all of life’s light and dark moments are what I gravitate to when getting inspired lyrically,” whilst Roy Davis Jr finds himself “going back in time to listen to Stevie Wonder’s ‘As’ or Bob Marley’s ‘Could You Be Loved’ to bring me back to a great feeling, but I also look to what I fight and stand for – love, umoja and peace, with a dash of wisdom for all mankind.
Knowing what you stand for, then, is key to imbuing your music with any sense of message, and Amir Alexander agrees. “Everything I produce is a natural extension and expression of my core essence. I make music that, first and foremost, moves me. As long as I am true to that it will touch others because I possess knowledge of self. To truly know oneself is to truly know the whole of humanity. To paraphrase a famous song, ‘I’m every man. It’s all in me.’”
To accompany this feature, we asked Giles Smith to pick his favourite 21st-century vocal tracks.You can check out his selection here.
