1 House is a feeling
Aesthetics is born as a discourse of the body
[Terry Eagleton, 1990].1
Perhaps it is time to study discourses not only in terms of their expressive value or formal transformations, but according to their modes of existence. The modes of circulation, valorization, attribution, and appropriation of discourses vary with each culture and are modified within each [Foucault, 1984].2
In autumn 1983 I stood on stage in front of about two thousand euphoric men in New York gay club Paradise Garage. My Roland TR 808 drumbox3 was pounding out its repetitive beats, triggering the Pro 1 synth to produce a relentless syncopated bassline. I was vaguely aware that the non-techno part of our musical trio felt a bit disconcerted, since the bass was in a different key than the saxophone. No problem, I thought, and with the confidence of a spaced out person and a grin to match, I attempted to tune my synthesizer to the singer’s voice which in its turn increasingly lost its melodic stability due to the lack of a supportive bass. Melody effaced, bass run amok and rhythm foregrounded, our dance tune, Love Tempo (Factory Records, 1983), radical enough for those times, entered a new world. The crowd, in a similar state of mind as the mad woman behind the keyboards, went wild; wide open eyes and happy smiles were highlighted by UV light. The rest of my band wasn’t that sure; the next day I had a bad hangover.
Even though some vinyl releases from Chicago indicated that there had been other producers, such as Mr Fingers, who were proud of their danceable ‘mistakes’,4 it took another five years before a pulsing dance track with a chaotic bass line gained international success when Phuture released Acid Trax (Trax, 1987). American house music had entered the British charts in 1986, but it was the notion of acid house that inspired an explosion of dance parties in Britain which put house music firmly on the map in 1988.
As with most products in popular culture, the formal qualities of house music are recognisable, yet ephemeral and always changing, depending on who is producing and using it at what place and what time. One could, for instance, point out that house music has the format of a repetitive 4/4 beat, roughly between 120 and 140 bpm;5 that house music could be defined by the use of certain types of production and consumption technologies; that house music may be described as a functional type of dance music produced specifically for the use by DJs; and also that house music has often been designed to take the dancing crowd out of this world. However, as with most cultural productions, the format and meaning of the genre of house music does change within various social and cultural contexts. There is not one ‘real and true’ form of house music, even though some conservative social elements would like to divide the world between those who enjoy ‘real’ house music and those who are deemed to be ignorant of ‘good taste’. Chuck Roberts, speaking on the Fingers Inc track Can You Feel It (Desire, 1988) could not have explained it better: ‘... once you enter into my house it then becomes our house and our house music ... This is our house’ [Heard and Roberts, 1988].6
And so arose the thesis for my PhD [Rietveld, 1995], which makes up the bulk of this book: to inquire into the way that house music has been developed and reinterpreted in three different social and cultural locations, Chicago in the USA, England and the Netherlands. In doing so, I was able to map some of the power structures and discourses which surround house music and which have given shape to its formal structures and sensibilities, as well as to its procedures and technologies of production and consumption. I also wanted to see if across these different localities there were any similarities in the specific techniques of house DJs. The latter should not be confused with any DJ in someone’s home. With ‘house DJ’, I mean a DJ who produces a sound track for a dance event which contains house music or who uses a particular musical aesthetic which hopefully will become clear as you read the fragmented and sometimes contradictory stories surrounding this dance music. Of course, nothing will explain this aesthetic better than a couple of nights out dancing at several house music related events:
You see, house is a feeling and no-one can understand really unless their feet moved onto the sound of our house.
Can — you — feel — it? [Heard and Roberts, 1988].7
I hope that reading about the discursive field of house music as a supplement to your dancing activities will add to a deeper pleasure of house music. Even if you don’t feel like going out for a dance, this study can be seen as an example of how ethnography can work from the inside out,8 rather than as a supposedly scientific method of imposing a theoretical ‘straight jacket’ upon an object of study. If anything, theory has been sampled to fit some of the rhythms and moods of this subject.9 I see this type of methodology as a nomadic tactic [Deleuze and Guattari, 1986], whereby the available arsenal of contemporary critical cultural theory has been utilised as a type of ‘tool-kit’ [Plant, 1992].10
As a starting point for this book a comparative ethnographic research project was set up in order to see if local ‘modes of existence’11 [Foucault, 1984] were of any significant influence on the development of the notion of house music. The research took place mainly in Chicago, New York, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Manchester and London, although other European places were visited as well in the context of this project. A history of events could be traced in the process of analysis. Even though house music has often been represented as a ‘global’ or ‘international’ type of dance music,12 local differences were of significance in the interpretation and production of house music. Within each locality there had been various contributions of cultural discourses which were specific to the cultural history of its users.
In Chicago and New York during the 80s, where the term was coined, its main users were African-American and Latino. This meant that African-American musical traditions such as gospel, soul, jazz and funk as well as Latino salsa music had informed the musical structures and sensibilities of house music. For example, its gospel elements, which influenced the vocal parts, added notions of community, love and hope for ‘better days’.13 In addition, in these cities house music developed out of a resourceful and competitive disco scene, where people played with sexual identities. In this context, ‘gay’ identity and its discourses had been crucial to the hedonistic meanings and sensual formats of house music which articulated sexual desire. These aesthetic and moral sensibilities informed a choice of records to be played at dance events, resulting in a mixture of imports (such as Italian disco, German trance, English electronic pop and HiNRG) and American records (like disco and soul). Out of this melting pot the structural aspects of house music were formulated, which initially started out as DIY DJ tracks. The availability of a local record pressing plant made it possible for this music to be heard by a crowd outside of its immediate cultural and social environment; it could be exported in its raw form without the aesthetic and moral interference as a ‘mainstream’ pop music industry. Many of the bigger house parties and clubs in Chicago were taking place away from residential areas in deserted nineteenth century industrial spaces. In this way public surveillance was kept to a minimum. If they were not licensed as clubs, some of these spaces were squats. Parties and clubs suffered some interference by police which, combined with the close down of local dance music station WBMX in 1987, resulted in a partial destruction of the local house music scene in Chicago. In the 90s, house music labelled as deep house was still produced in Chicago, mainly for a market outside of that area. An extended version of this American adventure can be found in Chapter 2.
Chapter 3 looks at the use and development of house music in England. Elements of the formal aspects of house music were employed in the production of English pop music since 1986. Around that time house music was imported from the USA and sometimes played on local radio stations or in clubs where the main soundtrack consisted of electro and funk. A combination of factors created the right environment for a hedonistic and yet communally loving fast paced dance music such as house to explode in its popularity. In 1987 there was a malaise in British club land where a new format was sought. During the 80s more English people spent their holidays abroad than ever before and brought back ideas from the Balearic islands of how to play music in clubs as well as the notion that clubs do not, as British legislation dictates, have to close at 2 am. Other souvenirs were taken back home as well. For example, in ‘gay’ clubs at Spanish holiday resort Ibiza, the entactogenic14 drug ecstasy had gained popularity and its use in a dance club environment was imported back to places like London and Manchester. People on ecstasy and other dance drugs do not wish to go home when they are not ready to do so. Empty industrial spaces such as warehouses, docks and airports as well as empty agricultural fields were available for parties and alleviated the opening restrictions which were made on clubs. House music became the soundtrack for dance marathons which often took place in an unlegislated environment. The latter provided a space for acid house parties which, in England, were called raves from 1989 onwards. By the end of the summer of 1988 a moral panic was created through sensationalist attention by the English tabloid press. As a result, acid house parties became a national phenomenon and in the process the consumption and production of house music increased significantly. The sense of community, which can be found in American house records, fitted the idea of being pitched against a society which legislated against parties as well as the fact that people under the influence of the drug ecstasy wanted to be ‘nice’ to their fellow human beings.15 Due to its national success (rather than being confined to the use by one specific social and cultural group) the English production of house music has taken on many different directions depending on the type of musical scene the producer belongs to. Not only dance club music, but also rave music was produced, which articulated the specific sensibilities of a rave party for teenagers. Since African-Caribbean culture has been influencing English music and dance culture since the 60s, it is not surprising to see that some of its musical formats, such as MC talk-overs during DJ sets, can be found in English productions of house related dance music. Due to the powerful position in pop journalism which the English had acquired on an international level, the format of raves was exported elsewhere, such as the USA and the Netherlands. Because of the particular way in which the British night time economy had been legislated, the consumption of house music had had some significant interference from governmental authorities. One example of this was legislation against paid parties, in the form of the Entertainments (Increased Penalties) Act, 1990. Another example is the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994, which contains an attempt to legislate against free parties which provide the amplification of ‘repetitive’ beats in certain public and private spaces. In addition, some dance clubs had problems in keeping their licenses, due to negative reactions by police, who were worried about drug (ab)use at house music related events. At the time of writing, in 1996, various forms of house music related events were still popular in England. In Manchester, for example, house music could still be heard in many bars and shops and in London there were various radio stations which were dedicated to house music. The music press was even announcing a ‘return’ of house, indicating an increased popularity during the mid-90s.
Chapter 4 deals with house music in the Netherlands, where there had been a tendency to follow English youth and pop cultures, due to the availability of British music publications. In addition, English people who attempted to escape draconian British legislation with regards to their leisure and cultural pursuits exiled themselves to Amsterdam and introduced the format of house parties in empty industrial spaces in the docklands at the end of the summer in 1988. The avant garde elites had already had some experience with house parties a year earlier. However, it was not until the end of 1988 that house music, which often included English productions, started to gain pop chart popularity. By the early 90s, it had established itself on a national level as a musical format, which was enjoyed by middle class bohemians as well as by football loving youth which were also known as ‘gabbers’. In the Netherlands, European sensibilities were added to its productions, such as those which can be found within a tradition of Belgian electronic body music or within that of electronic trance, which was in...
