The history of houseThe buzz words around town these days are "techno" and "rave". It seems like everywhere you go, someone is talking emphatically about the great underground rave party they attended or the slammin' new techno cut they've just heard. Well, such conversations are great if you happen to be hip and up on the happenings concerning underground club scene. As for everyone else words like "rave" and "techno" bear no real significance on their lives. Primarily this has to do with the fact that these musical terms refer to a music genre that has become considerably advanced. Hence it's difficult for someone to really understand and appreciate "techno" if they don't really understand its main roots which is "house". So let's kick some historical ballistics on the subject.What is house? House music is a continuation of disco. We're not talking disco as defined by groups like the Bee Gees or the Saturday Night Fever bubblegum crap that led to the popular 70's slogan "disco sucks". Instead we're talking about classic, Black, urban, Philadelphia, R&B, style disco as first defined by artists like First Choice, Loletta Halloway, Barbara Roy and MFSB. In fact many consider the drum patterns used in MFSB's classic "Love is the Message" as a primary building block around house. This particular track has been remade and remixed numerous times. House music's origins stretch back to 1977 when New York DJ Frankie Knuckles came to Chicago to establish an after-hours dance club called the Warehouse. Knuckles drew large crowds because he successfully incorporated popular NY style mixing and remixing techniques with black urban disco. Knuckles' unique style along with the DJ-ing techniques of popular Chicago jocks such as Kenny "Jamming" Jason and Keith "Funkmaster" Farley paved the way for contemporary or "traditional" house. These early house grooves were characterized by a raw, steady beat, piano riffs and haunting, synthesized tremblines. The vocals were sprinkled with phrases like "jack your body" and "jack the house". [jacking is a dance, but many performers used it with sexual connotations]. The success of this early house via clubs like the Warehouse led to the formation of Chicago's premiere house labels Trax and DJ International. Over the years house music grew, splintered off and incorporated other musical styles much the same way as did hip hop. For example in '84 and '85 Chicago house migrated to NY where it was integrated with the city's fully produced club music and given better arrangements, better orchestration and powerful, gospel-like vocals. Such music was best characterized by classics like Full House's "Communicate", Pleasure Pump's "Fantasize Me", and Joe Smooth's "Promise Land". The continuing integration of Chicago house and NY style R&B club music has led to what we now call "Deep House" and "Garage House". Tracks with the soulfull, gospel-like vocals are often deemed Garage, which is named after the famed NY now defunct house club. In 1989 this music arived in Belgium, were at that moment a real New Beat rage was going on. Soon after that the Belgian DJ's started mixing this new beat with some house. It was a great succes !!The clubs (Boccaccio, Barocci, La Rocca) were filled up, and new clubs were opened. House was relatively unknown at that stage. Thousands of youngsters went to clubs, the only place were house & techno were alive. As is the case with any underground based music, house began to find itself within the commercial ranks. Some of its pioneers like the group JM Silk signed major label recording contracts while pop stars like Rick Astley ["Together Forever"] and Natalie Cole ["Pink Cadillac"] latched onto the house groove. This commercialization was shunned by the core house audience and resulted in some of its originators to go further underground and emerge with new cutting edge forms of house. Acid house, a hybrid of traditional and hi-NRG dance music, was one example. This genre was characterized by a bumblebee like tebline, known as the "funky worm" that was caused by use of an out-dated 303 synthesizer. [Examples include Tyree's "Acid Over" and Fast Eddie's "Acid Thunder"]. The term "acid" initially referred to burning someone by sampling or "biting" one's musical style. This translation was lost when the music travelled overseas to London where house fans put the 60's drug connotation to it. The result was people getting into the music for the purpose of trippin' out as a result of getting high off a drug like ecstasy. It was here that house began to fuse with forms of DOR [dance oriented rock] and industrial music. It was this fusion that laid some of the groundwork for the current rave and techno scene. Simultaneously traditional house was beginning to fuse with hip hop thanks to Brooklyn based producer Todd Terry and Chicago house veterans Fast Eddie and Tyree. Prior to this hip hop and house were on opposite sides of the musical spectrum, but all that changed when Rob Base and EZ Rock dropped the classic jam "It takes Two". The midtempo swing beat of this hip hop groove was a favorite everywhere and somehow managed to unite the two camps. Its existence helped make Terry's style house more palatable to the traditional house audience. Prior to that Terry's grooves which were characterized by classical piano riffs, skillful sampling and mid to uptempo hip hop beats were at home among those into the Latino freestyle. It wasn't long before Terry produced classics like Warlock's "A Day in the Life", Swan Lake's "The Dream", or Royal House's "Can You Party" which became house music mainstays. In Chicago the tracks produced by Fast Eddie and Tyree seemed to be more rooted in traditional house with a rap being incorporated. Eddie's Planet Rock-like groove "Yo Yo Get Funky" is a classic and many credit him with coming up with the term "hip house". As for the first house record utilizing rappers, many turn to the Jungle Brothers jam "I'll House You". While hip house was taking hold, techno house was being born in Detroit. Kolks like Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins and Frankie Bones are the primary names that immediately come to mind. The techno style produced by Saunderson came in the form of the group Inner City ["Big Fun" and "Good Life"]. It was fully produced or deep house with a slightly hard, electronic edge. Juan Atkins and Frankie Bones' grooves seemed to have more of electronic/metalic/industrial sound. An interesting note, Atkins was the primary architect behind the group Cybotron which brought the hip hop electronic classic "Clear". As house advanced and its various genres and subgenres began to fuse with other musical styles, the groundwork was being laid for the current techno/rave scene. Hosh Gureli explained: "Techno house is a harder edge driven dance music that has the same rhythmic patterns as other house genres but use a harder synthesizer and a harder sample." He went on to explain that the basslines of current techno songs could be derived form such hard samples. For example, the sound of a chainsaw could be sampled and played in harmonic progression to make up a techno bassline. He also went on the explain that techno is characterized by a faster rhythmic pattern. "Techno is usually 126-130 bpm whereas deep house which is derived mostly from R&B, NY and New Jersey deep grooves is set around 116-122 bpm. Hosh continued by noting that in other genres of house like deep or garage the energy is more emotional as compared to the energy released in techno which is more raging.
What is a "rave" ?In general practice, a "rave" usually refers to a party, usually all night long, open to the general public, where loud "techno" music is mostly played and many people partake in a number of different chemicals, though the latter is far from necessary. The number of people at the event is unimportant; it can range from 50 people to 25,000 people. The cost of attendance is also unimportant - there have been good raves and bad raves at both ends of the cost spectrum (though in practice, the higher the price, the more commercial the event, and the lower the quality). At a rave, the DJ is a shaman, a priest, a channeller of energy - they control the psychic voyages of the dancers through his choice in hard-to-find music and their skill in manipulating that music, sometimes working with just a set of beats and samples, into a tapestry of mindbending music. A large part of the concept of raves is built upon sensory overload - a barrage of audio and very often visual stimuli are brought together to elevate people into an altered state of physical or psychological existence.With regards to the term "rave" Hosh explained: "The term rave is being over used much too much. One of the reasons we use it for the 'Underground Rave' show [Fridays 1-4am] is because it is the current buzz word or immediately identifiable term which describes the latest underground dance scene. It is what I would call a hip term to describe this new techno movement." He added that in techno there are various subgenres like "hard house", "hard techno", and "ambient techno"... "But all that really matters is that people get into the groove and have a good time," Hosh concluded.
The actual concept of raves is not new. As the base level, raves are very comparable to American Indian religious ceremonies, i.e. pow-wows, and also to the concept of the Shaman in Eskimo and Siberian society - where music is the key towards pulling oneself into a unique emotional and psychological state, a state in which one experiences washes of sensations and visions, not delusions, but visions. Sounds very hokey in print, but I'm sure MANY of you out there know what I'm talking about. The hypnotizing effect of techno music coupled with the seemless transitions and thematic progressions of rave DJ's as the night progresses can be quite intoxicating, resulting in what could be closely compared to a religious experience. Music in general has always been able to sweep people off their feet, but what distinguishes raves are the concept of the shared experience; a feeling of unity often arises, and people are open and friendly to one another. There is a loss of that "attitude" that is omnipresent in normal clubs and even in life in general. People are celebrated for who they are, not what they aren't. For a better, blow-by-blow
description of what an actual rave is like, please check check out the
"The Ecstatic
Cybernetic Amino Acid Test", an article that appeared in the San Francisco
Examiner in February 1992, and is perhaps one of the most comprehensive
surveys of the rave scene ever to appear in print.
What are the different styles of "techno music" ?Opinions on this vary greatly, but there are a few ways to distinguish techno from other types of music. Overall, techno is denoted by its slavish devotion to the beat, the use of rhythm as a hypnotic tool. It is also distinguished by being primarily, and in most cases entirely, created by electronic means. It is also noted for its lack of vocals in most cases. Techno also usually falls in the realm of 115-160BPM. There are of course exceptions to every one of these rules, but these guidelines seem to survive the "what about..." test most of the time.
Good Samples:
Jungle:
Very similar to both ambient and acid-house, trance is softer on the ears and body than most techno, but still keeps you dancing (unlike most ambient, where the effects are more profound if you SIT DOWN and listen). It's designed to try and take you, literally, into another world. Samples speak louder than
words:
A variant (or sub-genre) of this is hardtrance, which is currently very popular in the underground all over Europe. Characteristics, higher beat (c. 150 bpm), compulsory 303 sounds and string layers. Good Examples: Tribal is denoted by exactly that - rhythm patterns and sounds which closely mimic Third-World and Native American and other "World Music" styles. The connection between modern-day raving and ancient musical and cultural rituals is thus established, and the dancer can be transported to a more primal self (in theory). Good samples:
DJ'sThe art of DJing has come full swing in the world of the rave, where the DJ has replaced the live musician as the focal point for an event. The DJ is now regarded at the "conductor" of their "orchestra" of two turntables and a mixer (and maybe a sampler, but that's not necessary). The orchestra's "instruments" are the slabs of vinyl (or aluminum & plastic, in Pete Ashdown's case) that carry the basic grooves and melodies, and it's up to the DJ to ensure that the orchestra plays all their instruments in perfect sync and with a measure of continuity. The DJ must *know* their music, know where the breaks are, know the keys, know the BPM's, to make his/her set come out as perfect as possible. Anyone who says DJ'ing is just spinning records has never tried to do so. DJs often develop a following, and the level of devotion among some is something unseen since the Beatles.Visual EffectsVisual effects are one of the most important parts of the rave, but not always essential. Sometimes the best parties have only a strobe light, if even that much. On the other end of the spectrum are the 200-ft wide, screens drenched with projection, the 10-watt green lasers bouncing off the disco balls giving the effect of laser rain, the miles of fluorescent tubing, the computer graphics which can blow your mind away... it's a very large part of the "mindfuck" factor of raves.Live visuals have been used since the 60's at concerts, using overhead projectors and oil-and-water setups. Those are sometimes still used - and rotating color wheels in front of the projection beam can really add to the overall "trippyness". Strobes - Cheap, but effective.
"Mind Machines" are seldom much more than small strobes with varying speeds
that you wear inside glasses - but the effect of stroboscopic light near
the refresh speed (or half your refresh speed, or a quarter, etc) of your
eye can be quite hallucinatory. You could probably build your own Mind
Machine for less than 10 dollars.
Future of Technomusic"The whole techno scene here in is becoming a lifestyle,". "People are going to clubs and they're dressing the part. They're wearing funky clothes, blowing whistles, and wearing funky hats. It's a costume type of situation. If you can look funky and different from everyone else then you're happening."While techno is a phenomenon it will not necessarily die out because of its roots in house. Various types of house surface and resurface again under a different name and techno is no different. 1988 was a big year in which techno began to happen. It went away for awhile and reappeared in '91 and '92. "There's a revolution happening right now in night clubs. Young people have finally taken things into their own hands. They haven't waited for the night club owners to institute changes but instead changes have come from the promoters. It won't be long before some of the tired clubs in the city start having techno nights . Techno is the music that will lead us into the next decade. It's the music we all love, and the culture (the love, peace and tolerance thought) surrounding it has become a major influence on our way of living. We've become more tolerant, universal persons. We've opened our hearts and our minds to the music and to all the people around us. It has brought us together with people from all over the world. Ravers unite, as said! This music and it's culture is unlike anything we've ever experienced in our lives. It's totally new, and typical for the generation that was practically born in front of a computer. Thanks to Frederik Vandaele to help me with this information. |