interesting to follow the various petridis-slagging threads whilst simultaneously still receiving comments on my own unashamedly extra-scenic musings on Dizzee. Because on balance, what the comments add up to is something positive: that although there are those ready to slag you for daring to think about music, there are also those who are prepared to accept that there's no need to be protective-aggressive, that it's not meant as (nor does it constitute) a threat or a selling-out.
It just feels like the mirror-image of academia, to me. There are plenty of academics, even those working in 'contemporary' theory, who shrink at any contact with the outside world, and look on any looping of the theoretical with the popular as unforgivable miscegenation. There are closed and open-minded people in any 'scene'.
It's obvious that Petridis' vision of a "comical polarization" comes from his own laziness (incidentally I'm as ready as anyone to laugh at a blogger who describes records as 'texts', but I've not seen one yet). The imputation of ignorant exclusivity insults both groups. And hasn't all music, from classical to jazz, to hiphop and drum&bass, thrived on the internalisation and transformation of 'outsiders' theoretical crystallizations (often skewed - being 'right' doesn't matter here) of its meanings? What else constitutes progression in popular music except for the repeated trope of musicians' failing, in some characteristic way, to accurately copy their idols, those who went before?
Certainly, if a musical form internalizes its own analysis in the spirit of smugness and reinforcement, you get student-techno, drill&bass, crap art-rock, and any amount of shite. But it's equally possible (even inevitable, in a superconnected digital environment) for theories, metanarratives, cross-media connections and alternative mythologies to nourish a culture from outside (isn't that it itself almost a definition of the reason for hip-hop culture's longevity?).
It's more interesting in the case of Grime because, thanks to the web, the practitioners and the commentators/theorizers meet for the first time in a smooth space. Sometimes this makes for a virtual punch-up, which can be disturbing for the usually happily-insulated theoriser (i.e. me!) but it's also exciting. Even if in some limited sense this makes 'us' polarized, that's not the same thing as 'eternally separate' or 'mutually exclusive' as Petridis seems to suggest.
Posted by robin at April 29, 2004 04:51 PM
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