Is Dubstep Avant Garde Musical Genius?

[therapist]

This is when I wish I had a youtube account.

What does smh mean?

[Sexual_Chocolate]

slap my head

aka

facepalm

[ninjiless]

I tried counting everything he said that was wrong but I ran out of fingers and lost track :/

[dickman69]

i wanted to come back to this thread and talk shit about this guy

but now it has too many BM youtube vids in it for me to do that

sorry

[bright maroon]

hey rayman...

<iframe src="/forum/video.php?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrTgVrnQ_JQ&feature=relmfu" frameborder="0" style="overflow:hidden; height:auto; max-width:540px"></iframe>

[nousd]

imho
proppa dubstep was avant garde 2002-2004
underground 2005-2006
peaked 2007
sold out 2008-2009
bastardized 2010-2011
& currently having brief revival

[wolf89]

classic dubstep

[dickman69]

hey rayman...

<iframe src="/forum/video.php?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrTgVrnQ_JQ&feature=relmfu" frameborder="0" style="overflow:hidden; height:auto; max-width:540px"></iframe>

[pdomino]

Might explain it badly but I get what he's saying.

[moot0ne]

imho
proppa dubstep was avant garde 2002-2004
underground 2005-2006
peaked 2007
sold out 2008-2009
bastardized 2010-2011
& currently having brief revival

Aside from my own philosophical dribbling and some from bright maroon, this is some info I can hang my hat on. Thanks

[idontreallygiveashit]

slap my head

aka

facepalm

i thought it meant "shake my head" as in... sigh, shake my head in disbelief.

[ehbes]

slap my head

aka

facepalm

i thought it meant "shake my head" as in... sigh, shake my head in disbelief.

[crabb_steppa]

to anyone who's be following the 'nuum all along.. it's just..

[Genevieve]

proppa dubstep was avant garde 2002-2004

Hardly. It's always been a style that looked backwards rather than forwards. It was garage producers in an old school jungle mindset. And it's waay too easy to trace dubstep back to let's say... Groove Chonicles or Steve Gurley in a direct linnear fashion (who could both just as easily be traced back to Todd Edwards and Bizzy B). It really didn't redefine anything that seemed impossible with music at the time. Hell, various attempts at it had already been made by producers outside of the scene (Scorn comes to mind..).

Compare that to John Cage who's pieces attempted to redefine what we know as 'music' or even used the audience as the central instrument to his works without them even understanding that they were.

Innovation's the last reason I ever listened to dubstep. Nothing crazy was ever done, really. It repackaged and rehashed sounds as old as EDM itself. It was just reactionary to the other dance music from that time, which is what styles in general tend to be (techstep drumpatterns being a reaction to jungle's chaotic beats, black metal's moodiness, simplicity and atmosphere a reaction death metal's technical brutality, etc)

[Alistairr]

Dubstep is innovative dont get me wrong but to call a genre based solely round a baseline avant garde musical genius, is laughable.

its functional club music, like any dance music- it has a purpose to move people but this is not avant garde, lol.

avant garde in itself is debatable as its to a certain degree subjective, but to me at least, its gotta be more then just functional club music...

its gotta have wow factor with sublime production and a bit of folly alongside it like:



this is not probably the best example, but is all i could think of off the top of my head.

[Jas0n]

Dubstep is innovative dont get me wrong but to call a genre based solely round a baseline avant garde musical genius, is laughable.

its functional club music, like any dance music- it has a purpose to move people but this is not avant garde, lol.

avant garde in itself is debatable as its to a certain degree subjective, but to me at least, its gotta be more then just functional club music...

its gotta have wow factor with sublime production and a bit of folly alongside it like:



this is not probably the best example, but is all i could think of off the top of my head.

I think you do dubstep a disservice to call it club music. It has some application as such, of course - most genres do - but it's an incredibly low common denominator and not really representative of the genre itself in my estimation.

I consider "avant garde" to be such on account of two things: (1) existence on the frontier of progress in whatever field, whatever form of art, in some way or another; and (2) general inaccessibility to the masses - i.e. a sense of "eliteness" so to speak.

It isn't a term we should run from because it isn't a pejorative, it's simply an observation as to the nature of the music.

Earlier in the thread, someone (I forget who) compared dubstep to Bebop, which is appropos for sure... I consider dubstep to have a strong connection to jazz in general, primarily due to the sense of dignified culture behind it as well as the appreciation that jazz musicians and dubstep producers seem to have for a sense of perfection in their craft. I also see dubstep as having a strong connection with classical as well, in the sense that the process of dubstep production much more closely reflects the process of writing out a piece of classical music than it does the process of getting together with a few other musicians and playing (as in jazz).

I'm inclined to reject the term "genius" however. There is a lot out there which is probably not really properly considered "genius" ... no-one is going to question someone like Burial. But, side-by-side, how derivative can one producer be of another and still be considered genius? - He may still well be considered dubstep even if everything he does, he's simply appropriated for the purpose of copying.

The guy in the video talks about Skrillex. As for what Skrillex does, whether or not it's "dubstep" ... in all probability it takes too broad a definition of "dubstep" to be meaningful if we're to find a way to get him in. BUT, as part of a somewhat larger movement - explicitly-synthesized-and-electronic bass-oriented music in song-length format - he's big, and I think you have to be pretty intellectually dishonest (spite causes that) if you want to challenge his particular brand of genius.

Skrillex is exactly why dubstep IS avant garde. But not because he's dubstep - rather, because he's NOT dubstep in a sense with any purity, but he gets lumped into the genre by people who don't follow it closely. This pisses off the people on the inside, who see Skrillex's appeal to the masses as distasteful. Hence the term "brostep" - an insult to an entire genre based solely on the fact that broly dudes can get into it. What does this tell us? The real dubstep crowd wants nothing to do with such pedestrian trash.

Avant garde is a term which has to be accepted by those who are given the label. The alternative is that it's strictly a term used by bigots. But as long as the dubstep crowd wishes to keep its bloodlines pure and its music moving forward, it's a term which the dubstep community should embrace.

Sorry for this post.