Arabic flavored dubstep

[John Locke]

Sorry to be dull but people need to be a little careful with what "Arabic" means. India is not the same as Pakistan is not the same as Iran, China, Palestine, Morocco etc etc

too right

so assuming this is actually a thread about stuf from the indian subcontinent, not arabic stuf...

www.myspace.com/acandterra

check 1st tune. not dubstep, but a kind of grime/desi crossover

and the stuf on the cyrus LP is exactly what i meant by kebabshop influence. a tired, uninformed pastiche of 'ethnic' music. dont mean 2b so offensive cyrus, not a critique of yr musical talents, just think ppl shud stick to what they know, or at least get to know well b4 hand

[ekaros]

i have an oldie tune with the armenian Djivan Gasparyan's duduk solo...
download it from here!

About Armenia

[elgato]

Hmm I’m not sure where I stand on this one. But for arguments sake is there not an argument to say that half of the beauty of electronic music / rave, and one of the key factors necessary to keep any art exciting and truly progressive, is the subversion, perhaps bastardisation of source materials, the crude recontextualisation of influences to create something entirely outside of traditions. How much of a place do conceptions of ‘propriety’ or ‘validity’ have? Maybe in fact the most welcome should be the most fruityflutey or whathaveyou…

[John Locke]

How much of a place do conceptions of ‘propriety’ or ‘validity’ have? Maybe in fact the most welcome should be the most fruityflutey or whathaveyou…

yeah, totally valid. sometimes trying to copy stuff and then getting it completely wrong ends up more interesting than the original.

sometimes.

and funny how, on a few rare occasions, the originators buy back from the appropriators: both photek's psuedo-samurai sounds, and the cheesy koto-synths of late 70s proto-new-romantics Japan probably got an even bigger following in japan than outside. and im a big fan of both

i just really dont want hear some kind of 'ethnic' tinged MOR shit like something off of a compilation called "chakra-lounge" or whatever

[ekaros]

Hmm I’m not sure where I stand on this one. But for arguments sake is there not an argument to say that half of the beauty of electronic music / rave, and one of the key factors necessary to keep any art exciting and truly progressive, is the subversion, perhaps bastardisation of source materials, the crude recontextualisation of influences to create something entirely outside of traditions. How much of a place do conceptions of ‘propriety’ or ‘validity’ have? Maybe in fact the most welcome should be the most fruityflutey or whathaveyou…

If it's to me than i say this song is exist because i love the sound of it (duduk) and for attitudinizing. For sure i know it's crap and from the viewpoint of mr.Gasparyan it is dishonouring. but it's made for fun only. not a serious something so don't take it seriously. i think this apply to all of this kinda sample using music. real music is from real musicians
mercan dede making electronic sufi music. but that's not dubstep
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftl6KW00 ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxiHwxI8 ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os19Ne0m ... re=related

[deapoh]

I got a few bits myself, love the sound and different keys. People get so caught up with the standard C scale, they fear to try other scales. As long as you got the ear to know which notes fit and which don't, or if you have a book or webpage telling you the scales then it's all good. It can be a disaster if someone gets the notes wrong!

[elgato]

How much of a place do conceptions of ‘propriety’ or ‘validity’ have? Maybe in fact the most welcome should be the most fruityflutey or whathaveyou…

yeah, totally valid. sometimes trying to copy stuff and then getting it completely wrong ends up more interesting than the original.

sometimes.

and funny how, on a few rare occasions, the originators buy back from the appropriators: both photek's psuedo-samurai sounds, and the cheesy koto-synths of late 70s proto-new-romantics Japan probably got an even bigger following in japan than outside. and im a big fan of both

i just really dont want hear some kind of 'ethnic' tinged MOR shit like something off of a compilation called "chakra-lounge" or whatever

yeh i agree, i think as usual sometimes it works, sometimes not, i guess thats why i would shy away from saying that people shouldn't do it. also i am wary given that often it seems that notions of 'the authentic' are constructed (maybe not to be fair) but at least primarily propagated by people quite detached from any original context. but then i don't even know whether thats relevant

also same time i cringe at the thought of chakra-lounge compilations or whatever coming out of dubstep :/

[John Locke]

yeah, and just cos sum1s ethnicity is the 'right' one for making a certain type of music doesnt neccessarily mean they anymore qualified to produce it - or authentic, as u say - then anyone else. i'm sure there's plenty second gen brits that havent even grown up with anything much of the 'motherland' culture at home who re-invent themselves as some guru of such and such a genre when they had to discover the music as a complete foreign like any other caucasian british contemporary

and the mixing of influences isnt purely a western appropriation of the east or whatever. works in all directions. with sum really interesting shit coming out when western rock or hip hop or whatever is incorporated "badly" with other styles

i guess at the end of the day i got 2 concede its just about whether its any good or not, if ppl want 2 drop fruityflute tunes, then good 4 them.

but i wont buy it.

others no doubt will

[elgato]

yeah, and just cos sum1s ethnicity is the 'right' one for making a certain type of music doesnt neccessarily mean they anymore qualified to produce it - or authentic, as u say - then anyone else. i'm sure there's plenty second gen brits that havent even grown up with anything much of the 'motherland' culture at home who re-invent themselves as some guru of such and such a genre when they had to discover the music as a complete foreign like any other caucasian british contemporary

Absolutely, when I said what I did about the detachment from context, I meant in many different senses, ethnic, geographical, cultural, economic, temporal… maybe one might argue that there is some ‘essence’ to a tradition, that an artist may connect to regardless of any of these things, and that this is what determines ‘validity’ or value or whatever, but to me that is such a restrictive ideal, and one that serves to stifle creativity. I would certainly not judge an artist negatively on the basis that they seek to studiously create within a tradition, and often wonderful music will come as a result, its more the cultural or ideological imperative that often comes with that approach that I dislike.

[elgato]

by the way that last bit is more just thinking out loud, not aimed at your comments specifically or meant to be part of the previous debate so much

[John Locke]

nah, still seems relevant to the discussion 2me

maybe the "essence" is somtehing that can be acquired just by full immersion in a genre. by study. tho i dont mean it in an academic sense. just taking time to understand. and feel.

but some "mystical" or "exotic" shit churned out in half an hour after watching a kung fu movie is just embarassing. tho if i'm honest i only seen a few examples of this stuff above, so maybe I'll shut up now.

but by way of example i think its El'b that done a cumba track (popular music from the coast of colombia) and i played it to a colombian and they just laughed, thought is was just wak and embarassing

i guess its a fine line between influence and parody...

...or even insult ha ha

[ts (yesyesiow)]

Big up to both Elgato and Battle Gong for a rarely intellectual and interesting discussion that has made for a very good read

[elgato]

nah, still seems relevant to the discussion 2me

maybe the "essence" is somtehing that can be acquired just by full immersion in a genre. by study. tho i dont mean it in an academic sense. just taking time to understand. and feel.

but some "mystical" or "exotic" shit churned out in half an hour after watching a kung fu movie is just embarassing. tho if i'm honest i only seen a few examples of this stuff above, so maybe I'll shut up now.

but by way of example i think its El'b that done a cumba track (popular music from the coast of colombia) and i played it to a colombian and they just laughed, thought is was just wak and embarassing

i guess its a fine line between influence and parody...

...or even insult ha ha

Yeh of course still relevant, I just didn’t want it to seem like I was sticking an unnecessary boot in given that you’d said that you’d conceded a fair bit already!

I dunno, again, who is to say that your Columbian friend is in an inherently superior position from which to adjudge music as ‘valid’ or ‘quality’, just because it draws on his heritage? Aside from what was said above, often those closest to this notion of the authentic or appropriate or whatever are the ones who maintain the tightest grip on orthodoxy and have the greatest stagnating influence.

So say someone knocks out something ‘exotic’ after watching a film or hearing something in a takeaway… that tune represents their understanding of the influence, the original source shone through the prism of their life, through their way of looking at the world – why should they require any kind of ‘true’ understanding to make something which is valid or interesting?

[fushimi]

If someone makes a tune with say, a bunch of samples they've downloaded after 10 seconds search on the Internet after typing in "arabic sounds" is it a worse tune that if they've heavily researched then made the exact same tune? I don't think whether someone has put in the time to truly "understand" the sounds they're using has any bearing on my enjoyment, unless they actually explain the process they went through in an interesting way (like Blackdown has).

P.S. what are "psuedo-samurai sounds"?

[shonky]

I dunno, again, who is to say that your Columbian friend is in an inherently superior position from which to adjudge music as ‘valid’ or ‘quality’, just because it draws on his heritage? Aside from what was said above, often those closest to this notion of the authentic or appropriate or whatever are the ones who maintain the tightest grip on orthodoxy and have the greatest stagnating influence.

I've got several colombian friends and their tastes in music seem to span from samba (fairly cliched poppy style), trance, early 90's rock and Pendulum.

[fullyrecordingz]

Listen to this fresh track on Raptors myspace http://www.myspace.com/raptorsworld

it works

[John Locke]

nah, still seems relevant to the discussion 2me

maybe the "essence" is somtehing that can be acquired just by full immersion in a genre. by study. tho i dont mean it in an academic sense. just taking time to understand. and feel.

but some "mystical" or "exotic" shit churned out in half an hour after watching a kung fu movie is just embarassing. tho if i'm honest i only seen a few examples of this stuff above, so maybe I'll shut up now.

but by way of example i think its El'b that done a cumba track (popular music from the coast of colombia) and i played it to a colombian and they just laughed, thought is was just wak and embarassing

i guess its a fine line between influence and parody...

...or even insult ha ha

Yeh of course still relevant, I just didn’t want it to seem like I was sticking an unnecessary boot in given that you’d said that you’d conceded a fair bit already!

I dunno, again, who is to say that your Columbian friend is in an inherently superior position from which to adjudge music as ‘valid’ or ‘quality’, just because it draws on his heritage? Aside from what was said above, often those closest to this notion of the authentic or appropriate or whatever are the ones who maintain the tightest grip on orthodoxy and have the greatest stagnating influence.

So say someone knocks out something ‘exotic’ after watching a film or hearing something in a takeaway… that tune represents their understanding of the influence, the original source shone through the prism of their life, through their way of looking at the world – why should they require any kind of ‘true’ understanding to make something which is valid or interesting?

more than happy to 'concede'; its a discussion after all, not a war

yo, i think ive already made it clear that i agree with pretty much everything u r saying here - or perhaps its not that clear, cant seem to string a coherent sentence 2gether anymore.

anyway, yeah, ppl r free to make whatever music they want, but my first post still stands; please, I dont want to hear any cheesy 'ethnic' dubstep. ut thats just me

i dont expect anyone 2 pay attention to this plea, but its still my right to say i think this shit mostly sucks.

but sum1 could easily come along and prove me wrong. and i'll b happy to hear it too: like i said, i'm a big fan of japan - which from the point of view ive argued above hardly looked like a good idea on paper: some camp english guys naming their group after a country they'd probably never even been to and then writing songs all about a neighbouring country (china) instead, and more in the style of hong kong pop at that


er, what else, oh yeah, samurai sounds: ni ten ichi ryu...but u knew thats what i meant anyway and was just being difficult, right? ; )

yeah, i dont actually know any colombians who listen to cumba. but i guess the effect of hearing some english dude doing it must be a bit like hearing bad britpop imitations from southeast asia, or even a german MCing over jungle in english but with an MTV american accent. not illegal, but probably a little ridiculous. tho, yeah, something good could even come out of it.

oh, and fushimi again, yr point is an entirely fair one. but i'm not saying that "study" or "immersion" is a guaranteed recipe for great music. if the fruityflutester with his chants of the rainforest samples comes up with something good, then its good. and if the ethnomusicoligist chin-stroker dunt come up with the goods then who cares. but i just think its more likely that something good will come out of a bit of "immersion"

but i personally think photek's asia fixation works, and yet teebee's is a bit cheesy. couldnt say if one was more "immersed" than the other, surely this is just down to subtlety and talent

which at the end of the day is the tiebreaker (oh, that and the fact that photek invented it I guess)

i'll be the first to admit that ive even been known to attempt something ill-informed and "exotic" in the past. best forgotten

yo, at the end of the day anything goes . but some stuff i just personally find embarassing

but given that for a period dubstep took its name a little too seriously and gave church of england white boys the idea that it would be cool to litter their tracks with echoing references to the rastafarian religion perhaps i shouldnt expect too much sympathy for my opinion on this forum ; )

u know what, now that i think of it el gato, i think we already rinsed a thread talking about similiar shit a year or so ago. but always a pleasure anyway...

oh, by the way, colombia is spelt with an o, not a u...thats a university in NYC. pedantic i know, but even more offensive to colombians than cumba-step

[stenchman]

quite unrelated but i have made some gypsy n bass check it out on www.myspace.com/henchmandnb for the silly heads

[joe muggs]

but by way of example i think its El'b that done a cumba track (popular music from the coast of colombia)

I think you mean Cumbia, don't you?

i guess its a fine line between influence and parody...

...or even insult ha ha

Yeah, and you know what, parody isn't always a bad thing. Now of course it's great when Geiom gets involved with a serious Pakistani singer, or Shackleton learns Turkish instruments, or Blackdown gets his Cheng on - but as well as that I actually REALLY LIKE a lot of the slightly cheesy sampling of other ethnic music that goes on in dubstep - especially a lot of the earliest dubstep - and in grime. Stuff that literally is ripped from a kung fu movie or video game or some cheap arsed tape off the market or whatever. Why? Because it's CHEEKY. It's not done in the same way as those worthy vapid house of horrors hippie dippy Hotel Costes or whatever chillout albums, where 'foreign' = 'exotic' = 'spiritual' = 'like really mellow, yeah?'. It's done because the producer thinks "that sounds good - I'll have that!" - in the same spirit as hip hop or old school hardcore take/took sounds from wherever and whenever, purely on the basis of whether they have an instant impact on the dancer. And in some senses that rough'n'ready - even ignorant - approach to sampling is actually "honest" in that it reflects the environment the music is created in. London is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, and (unless we live in South Kensington or something) we're bombarded with a constant mish-mash of African, Arabic, S American, Carribean and whatever else music plus all the bastardised versions of other cultures' sounds that soundtrack adverts, movies and video games - so it's not surprising that that completely bastardized and totally "inauthentic" collage finds its way into the city's own music. Jamaican music's always done that, whether it's American R&B in the 60s, kung fu movies in the 70s or video games in the 80s - so why shouldn't British music?

All I'm saying I think is that any approach - serious and well-resarched or stooooopid and bodged together - CAN work, it's all down to who does it and whether they do it with guts and spirit.

[slothrop]

Yeah, and you know what, parody isn't always a bad thing. Now of course it's great when Geiom gets involved with a serious Pakistani singer, or Shackleton learns Turkish instruments, or Blackdown gets his Cheng on - but as well as that I actually REALLY LIKE a lot of the slightly cheesy sampling of other ethnic music that goes on in dubstep - especially a lot of the earliest dubstep - and in grime. Stuff that literally is ripped from a kung fu movie or video game or some cheap arsed tape off the market or whatever. Why? Because it's CHEEKY. It's not done in the same way as those worthy vapid house of horrors hippie dippy Hotel Costes or whatever chillout albums, where 'foreign' = 'exotic' = 'spiritual' = 'like really mellow, yeah?'. It's done because the producer thinks "that sounds good - I'll have that!" - in the same spirit as hip hop or old school hardcore take/took sounds from wherever and whenever, purely on the basis of whether they have an instant impact on the dancer. And in some senses that rough'n'ready - even ignorant - approach to sampling is actually "honest" in that it reflects the environment the music is created in. London is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, and (unless we live in South Kensington or something) we're bombarded with a constant mish-mash of African, Arabic, S American, Carribean and whatever else music plus all the bastardised versions of other cultures' sounds that soundtrack adverts, movies and video games - so it's not surprising that that completely bastardized and totally "inauthentic" collage finds its way into the city's own music. Jamaican music's always done that, whether it's American R&B in the 60s, kung fu movies in the 70s or video games in the 80s - so why shouldn't British music?

All I'm saying I think is that any approach - serious and well-resarched or stooooopid and bodged together - CAN work, it's all down to who does it and whether they do it with guts and spirit.

Yeah, totally agree with that. The worst stuff to come out of this sort of thing is the dull chakra-lounge or global chill tunes, but a lot of the time, those aren't made by the people reaching for a fruityflute and a Kurosawa sample, they're made by the ones listening to Hariprasad Chaurusia and roping in a classically trained tabla player and an authentically turkish vocalist. And it's the apparent authenticity or the "properly foreign therefore really spiritual" thing that helps them to get away with producing such tepid music a lot of the time. If you're going for obviously inauthentic stuff, then the tune has to stand or fall on whether it's any good or not.