3/19/14 5:48 PMThe Wire - Collateral Damage: Tony Herrington on the soul of electronic dance music

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Collateral Damage: Tony Herrington on the soul ofelectronic dance musicMarch 2014

Reasserting the roots of Kraftwerk’s sound in African-American R&B and jazz reveals how the soul of electronicdance music is being throttled by the dead hand of theculture industry. By Tony Herrington

In January, David Toop gave a talk at London’s ScienceMuseum in which he made the startling assertion that Kraftwerkwere Dusseldorf’s answer to The Isley Brothers. Rather than afrivolous provocation by a bored theorist, this represented a rarereturn to a subject David once made his own, critiquing existingorthodoxies on the historical give and take of African-Americanand European popular musics, remaking connections that havebeen ignored for various nefarious reasons (or just throughsheer ignorance) by critics and academics alike; or that havebeen written out of history altogether for being too damninconvenient or messy.

David’s talk was partly prompted by a Facebook post by KirkDegiorgio, which bemoaned the fact that the African-Americancontribution to Kraftwerk’s sound has been routinely sidelined bythree decades of rhetoric proclaiming them der Patenonkels oftechno and electro. As anyone familiar with the two interviewswith Kirk published in The Wire (way back in issues 160 and214), this is a bone of contention he has been gnawing away at

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3/19/14 5:48 PMThe Wire - Collateral Damage: Tony Herrington on the soul of electronic dance music

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for some time.

As far as Kirk is concerned, the origins of techno and electro andall the musics that flow from them lie in the synthesizedbasslines, applied rhythmic technologies and Afrofuturistconcepts developed in the early 1970s – pre-Autobahn,pre-Radio Activity – by such African-American visionaries asHerbie Hancock, George Duke, Bernie Worrell and StevieWonder, which Juan Atkins et al then took to the next level.Previously he has come up with ingenious theories, rooted in aclass analyses of the catastrophic socio-economic conditionsthat prevailed in the handful of African-American run US cities inthe 70s and 80s, to explain why early Detroit techno is infectedby white electro pop tropes seemingly picked up from overexposure to Depeche Mode and Thomas Dolby. Now he looks tobe getting down to the serious business of recalibrating thosetropes’ respective source as African-American by proxy.

On Facebook, Kirk mentioned The Isleys in relation to Kraftwerk,and in his talk, David took up the idea and ran with it, expandingthe argument to include the impact of progressive African-American jazz on the Dusseldorf mensch-machines.

But Kraftwerk as the German Isleys makes sudden sense to me,on both formal and musicological levels. Old song formsretrofitted with new technologies: that sounds like what Kraftwerkdid and what African-American popular music had been doingsince the get go. Think of the transition from country blues in the30s to electric blues in the 50s: the same songs only nowtechnologized. Then think about what Kraftwerk did two decadeslater to Chuck Berry’s automotorik R&B. The source code of“Autobahn” is routinely located in the music of The Beach Boys.Fine, but then analyse the source of The Beach Boys’ sound,which according to Brian Wilson himself, was an attempt torewire 50s inner city African-American doo-wop and R&B for thecar and beach culture of 60s California.

The Isleys began their remarkable 60 year career as a doo-wopgroup in 1954, a year before the official birth of rock ’n’ roll, thenmoved through the eras of R&B, soul, funk, disco, electro,house, new jack swing and on and on right up to the presentmoment of Auto-tuned MOBO. As far as lengthy careers go, theyhave around 15 years on their Deutsche doppelgangers. Butplay Radio-Activity back to back with Tour De FranceSoundtracks: as with The Isleys, and virtually every otherAfrican-American R&B act that has stayed the course, the songsremain the same; it’s the upgrades in the technology that catchthe imagination.

During his talk David cued up The Isleys’ “Highways Of My Life”and Kraftwerk’s “Tanzmusik” and played them back

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simultaneously to make a mischevious-serious point aboutshared musical roots. In an even more inspired moment, hedropped The Isley’s 1969 “Vacuum Cleaner” (“My love is like avacuum cleaner/It keeps pulling me in”) as an example of thekind of techno-eroticism that had long been a part of the imageryof African-American R&B and would become such a keyKraftwerk trope.

But the progressive jazz influences on Tone Float by the pre-Kraftwerk Organisation and the first two Kraftwerk albums properare there for all to hear, in particular the Afrodelic sounds-in-space odysseys developed in the mid-late 60s by The ArtEnsemble Of Chicago and Pharaoh Sanders, as well as themonolithic one chord vamping plus freak out soloinginterspersed with passages of pure tone float that characterisedMiles Davis’s late 60s groups, and which Miles adapted fromJames Brown and Sly Stone. Like Miles, Kraftwerk’s geniuspartly resided in their preternatural ability to instantly detect,absorb and repurpose minute but significant shifts in thefundamental stuff of African-American popular music, which is tosay rhythms and technology. And the tight-but-loose percussiverhythms on those first two Kraftwerk records, which were thenquantized on Ralf Und Florian to establish the rhythmic gridKraftwerk would utilise for the rest of their career, sound exactlylike those laid down on Bitches Brew and Miles Davis At Fillmorefractionally earlier by Jack DeJohnette, who we may have to nowretroactively acknowledge as one of the founding fathers ofmotorik.

Was this one of the reasons those records were mysteriouslyexcluded from 2009’s otherwise comprehensive repacking of theKraftwerk catalogue, a project overseen by the group itself?Maybe white critics and fans with either cloth ears or clandestineagendas or axes to grind aren’t the only ones looking to wipe theslate clean of anything that will get in the way of maintainingKraftwerk’s cult status as the Mitteleuropa ground zero ofelectronic dance music.

Such talk is guaranteed to get the trolls clambering out of theirholes. When Kirk Degiorgio dissed Throbbing Gristle andCabaret Voltaire in relation to the more complex rhythmatics ofhouse, techno and electro in the second of those two Wireinterviews, an irate reader laid into him on the next issue’sLetters page: “TG were utilising sequenced rhythms… a full tenyears before Degiorgio’s heroes in dance music,” spat TimJones from Manchester, which was a particulaly soberingexample of the kind of aggressive reactionary historicalrevisionism that has been brought to bear on the origins ofelectronic dance music from the other side of the tracks, andnow I think about it, I can’t believe we actually published it

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without comment. Meanwhile, laissez-faire postmodernists willdismiss it all as essentialist and atavistic.

But consider this: in 2014, post-techno electronic dance music isincreasingly being annexed to the whitest ever white worlds ofstadium rock, post-industrial culture and sound art, a deleteriousprocess that further isolates it from its origins in postwar African-American culture. For one thing, you can’t actually dance tomuch of this stuff anymore. The act and art of dancing havebeen rendered null and void by the music’s devolution intoSkrillex-like festival bangers or liminal electronica. This issignificant because dancing, in case anyone needed reminding,was once a key function of the music, a crucial component in adynamic and inclusive feedback loop. Taking it out of that loophas implications for the music’s social dynamic and by extensionits racial, sexual and economic dynamics too. Likewise,electronic dance music’s migration into museums and galleryspaces (Kraftwerk’s most recent venues of choice) is detaching itfrom the vernacular of pop culture itself. Instead, it is channeledinto petit bourgeois notions of what constitutes serious art(ironically, or maybe not, David Toop’s talk took place in amuseum gallery in advance of a performance of Kraftwerk’smusic rescored for classical ensemble). This in turn prescribesthe terms and conditions in which audiences might react andrespond to it, devolving it into a highbrow, non-participatoryspectator sport; even worse, it predetermines the kinds ofindividuals that might constitute those audiences, activelyexcluding all Others.

In the midst of all this, and as critics and producers continue tocite Kraftwerk and their industrial progeny as electronic dancemusic’s ne plus ultra, the need to state the uncomfortablehistorical facts of the matter, to redraw a more complex lineagethat goes back to the revolutionary technological progressionsthat swept through African-American music on the cusp of the70s, feels more necessary, not to say liberating, than ever.

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This to not put too fine a point on is at best revisionist at worstinherently racist nonsense. Racist nonsense because in themanner of many a self-appointed white spokesmen for afroCaribbean culture the author makes all the usual white colonialmistakes based on the premise of there being some primordial‘other’ inherent in blackness.

Rather than seeing all culture and music in particular as aprocess of cross fertilisation between people of all races andcultures be they black, white, brown etc etc. it tries to locatesome essentialist rhythmic purity within black culture no doubtoriginating in those complex polyrthymns heard around the camp

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fire.

In this context the article trips over itself in trying to argue thatthe black man did it first and then the white man took it (why notjust say pinched it) and diminished its essence till oh la it endsup in the gallery. Let’s forget the traditions of dance stretchingback decades in Europe let’s forget black and white musiciansworking together such as Wonder and Tonto – no instead letslocate innovation in the black and derivation in the white. The underlying and insidious colonialism of this misguided andinherently racist ‘otherness’ underpins not only this article but thewhole generation of veneration around roots music, thewillingness to forgive Rastafarianism its inherent sexism andBabylonian bollocks not to mention bedrooms full of pasty whiteboys copying rap moves and licks in some nightmare update ofthe minstrel show.

Roger Bottomly

12|03|2014

i agreedisagree. "Jein" to say it in german. The thing is thatKraftwerk did everything they could to NOT produce anythingblues related - because this white rock music trying to pretend itis blues is a scam, a thievery. because rock was more and morea spectacular lie that fed on blues (and i would easyly argue thatblues was already dead because of this). Then of course theyused rythms and technology. This is where i find it a little tooeasy to consider that EVERYTHING that is rythm/tech has adebt to R&B. When Can where rooting themselves clearly onJames Brown, Kraftwerk did not. See the (very little) european rythmic tradition : Varese ionisation has a debt to black music (or try to answer thequestion balck music raise in the white soul), but certainly not toR&B. It was actually an attempt to put rythm in white musicwithout trying to play "jazz" (my interpretation). And i thinkKraftwerk did something similar. they did not deny their blackinfluence but they tried to lay out the foundation of a GERMANrythm music that is totally rooted in postwar germany, a germanmusic that would have no relation what so ever with germanhistory (romanticism and all what lead to nazism). the point wasnot being white or black but being german in a time wherepeople were ashamed to be. This "german-non-traditional-non-folk" music had to be technological. economic miracle,ruhrgebiet all that stuff... ANd maybe some afro-miles-davies-Motown-Stax roots are there, why not, but that was NOT whatthey wanted to achieve. and i find it rather a little over the topthoerician academic like to go from vaccum cleaner to thetechno-eros of Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk as a techno-eros and it isvery very different. it is quite humoristic, based on dullness,

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boring landscape, beautifull ennui/fatigue... i do not think theyever tried neither to be "purely white" (or to hide anything in theirrerelease, common!). nonsense. they were trying to save thegerman soul by recreating it from scratch (and yes "from scratch"does NOT exist, there of course comes influences they had).Neubauten did the same (and they were still big fans of LeePerry).

Guillaume 12|03|2014

Articles like this pretty much put a point on why I've let mysubscription to Wire lapse. This article is so tortured andgrasping it reads like something written by a second-year whohad never thought about racial issues in music writing for theirstudent newspaper. It also displays the same level of apparentunfamiliarity with the scene.

Just to pick one piece.

"For one thing, you can’t actually dance to much of this stuffanymore. The act and art of dancing have been rendered nulland void by the music’s devolution into Skrillex-like festivalbangers or liminal electronica."

Nobody who has any exposure to today's dance music scenecould possibly write this. We just had (to live through) a deep-house revival.

This particular line reads like 'I wish dance music was the sameas when I was 20' or 'I have no idea what I'm talking about, butthis Skrillex guy seems to be getting a lot of press - that must bewhat's going on now'.

As for the larger questions of race in modern dance music, it'spretty weird that we have a whole article supposedly about thatwhich doesn't mention the rise of Footwork or Trap in recenttimes. Or the fact that Miles was getting deep into Stockhausen in thelate 60s/early 70s.

Dan G 12|03|2014

"Rather than seeing all culture and music in particular as aprocess of cross fertilisation between people of all races andcultures be they black, white, brown etc etc. it tries to locatesome essentialist rhythmic purity within black culture no doubtoriginating in those complex polyrthymns heard around the campfire."

actually Roger, it is "I" who have long accepted this cross-fertilisation and am simply frustrated when I come acrossbiographies/articles that completely omit the importance oflesser-known but equally important influences from Black

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American music.

it's not a 'purist' crusade as you have misinterpreted - more asimple redressing the balance.

Kirk

12|03|2014

But it IS essentialist, isn't it? The boundaries between genrescan be drawn wherever anyone who wants to draw one chooses.So when and where was techno born? Was it with the BellevilleThree? Or was it with the ideas they owed to Kraftwerk, the Cityof Detroit, Herbie Hancock? Was it with the early synthesists andcomputer musicians? And so on.

As for all dance music now either being stadium rock andnarcoleptic house, give me a break.

James Greenan 13|03|2014

"Racist nonsense because in the manner of many a self-appointed white spokesmen for afro Caribbean culture..."

if you're gonna bitch about racism, at least get your facts right--the isleys aren't from the caribbean, they are from NEWJERSEY. "african-american" refers to people with africanheritage born in the UNITED STATES, not the caribbean. mostafrican-americans have roots in the south of the usa, not thecaribbean--we have a different history that is quite welldocumented (or you could just watch "roots.")

--------

"We just had (to live through) a deep-house revival." sure, but is that what's getting booked for these massivefestivals? i think your "we" = the underground--who weren't goingto the edm-fest anyway.

--------

"actually Roger, it is "I" who have long accepted this cross-fertilisation and am simply frustrated when I come acrossbiographies/articles that completely omit the importance oflesser-known but equally important influences from BlackAmerican music."

to further bolster kirk's point, african-american music is NOTgenerally treated equally to its euro-american cousin. look at the"music" section in any major newspaper--euro-based music is"music" whereas afro-based music is often "pop music" or someother delineation--does that seem equal to you?

T-Bird 14|03|2014

Time to weigh in with some responses.

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First, to be called a racist by the likes of Roger Bottomly isindeed a badge of honour I will wear with pride. He probablythinks his comments are progressive, but they reveal him to bethe kind of white man (I'm assuming he is white just as heassumes that I am) who is terrified by the implications of what hehears in black music, because it confronts him with a reality hedare not face. This is implicit in all his comments then madeexplicit in his bizarre invocation of European dance music (what,like the waltz and the paso doble?), his dismissal of rootsreggae's political agenda as sexist and Babylonian bollocks, andfinally in the nightmare vision of white supremacists everywhereof white youth being infected by black culture.

Guillaume's comments actually support my points rather thancontradict them. The problem is that Kraftwerk were retroactivelyconfigured as the fount for the subsequent iterations of the blackmusic they took from in order to forge a music that ownednothing to their parents' generation (a generation which damnedAfrican-American culture as degenerate), and then became sowrapped up in their own myth that they started perpetuating thisdistorted notion themselves. Kraftwerk may have beenattempting to realise a music fit for the postwar industriallandscapes of the Ruhr valley, and in this they initiallyacknowledged their debt to the way The Stooges attempted onFunhouse to do the same thing for the postwar industriallandscapes of the American Midwest. But as Iggy Pop hasclearly stated, the models for Funhouse were John Coltrane andJames Brown. We also need to be wary of this other cliche, thatGerman rock of the 60s and 70s was an attempt to break withblues-derived forms. The blues is not just about a particularchord sequence, it is, as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal and othershave made clear, a philosophical condition that lies at the root ofall African-American popular music, from R&B to hiphop, fromJames Brown to John Coltrane.

Finally, I'm not talking about ALL dance music, obviously, butpost-techno electronic dance music, the stuff that is routinelycited as the progeny of Kraftwerk - so not all the current houseand garage derivatives which are descended from disco, and notall the jungle/grime/dubstep derivatives (aka the HardcoreContinuum if yr a follower of Simon Reynolds) which aredescended from UK breakbeat culture which was a synthesis ofUS rap and Jamaican sound system culture. Analyse therhythms in all these musics and the differences are clear.Rhythm is the foundation of all African-American music (just as itwas the foundation of the radical break 20th century compositionmade with the classical canon back in the day - just askStravinsky and Debussy, or Aaron Copland - and this rhythmicbreak was fascilitated in no small part by the example of jazz).

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That's not an essentialist statement but one based inmusicological fact (though I'm happy to be called an essentialistwhen what holds all these assumptions in place is a racistsystem that is, as all racist systems are, deeply essentialist itself.Fight fire with fire and by any means necessary).

The rhythms of techno and electro and their derivatives arerooted in R&B and funk. They are R&B and funk technolgized.More than that, these musics marked the most profound attemptto stage a philosophical discussion on the nature of black USidentity after the end of the world (cf Sun Ra and Public Enemy)via pop culture since P-funk, which in turn was the most radicalsince the cosmic jazz of the 60s. So techno and electro in theirown time were the blackest of black musics, including hiphop.And it is this music which Kraftwerk have been so lazily andretroactively cited as the forefathers of, and which now is beingcut off from its true origins and meaning and milieu by the likesof EDM and liminal electronica. When Afrika Bambaataa had hisfamous epiphany listening to "Trans-Europe Express", the onethat led to "Planet Rock", he wasn't hearing anything he didn'talready know, he was, to paraphrase Sun Ra, hearing itrefracted through a dream that black music had dreamt long ago.If you can get to that then you might just be getting on the righttrack to seeing and hearing things as the really are.

Tony Herrington 15|03|2014

David Toop's most inspired contribution to rock criticism was his'two tabs and a synthesiser' review of a Model 500 track back in'87.

From there, it was an easy step to Fingers Inc and everythingthat followed - for which I'll be eternally grateful.

Steve E. 15|03|2014

Derrick May was wrong! Techno is the sound of George Clintonin an elevator on his own! Seriously though, why is there nomention of latin american music and the huge influence that hadon electro and techno? Why do you avoid discussing the recordsthat Kraftwerk made that are most relevant to this; Trans EuropeExpress, the Robots, the Computer World LP? At times it seemslike you are making out that Kraftwerk are an r'n'b/funk band andtheir music was just just a logical iteration in its development, butsurely you don't really think that. I'd agree that the influence ofAfrican American music on them is rarely discussed, but why notlimit your argument to that and give some more convincingexamples rather than red herrings like the jazz influence of theirearlier albums or the beach boys?

Chalmero 17|03|2014

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Sorry but there really is no scuh thing as black music -

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