we are 95% done with it so we might as well start compiling our thoughts now and not november when we trip over ourselves with each others end of year things anyway
shit started with occupy wall street and will (hopefully) end with the beginnings of a bernie sanders presidency. and theres obv been a lot of shit in between.
the 2010s rlly seem to be the decade where everything we thought knew broke and shattered, for better or worse. the stupid thoughtless acceptance in the us for the same neoliberal bs started to break with the obama administration doing everything in its power to not follow up on the social democratic promices it made in the campaign, and built after years of protests of everything from drone strikes to trans rights to internet surrvalence, until we got donald “the big new yorker from pizza hut” trump as our new openly white nationalist preisdent and proving that nothing rlly changed for the good in the end. the stupid tumblr idpol liberalism of the first half was shattered by #gamergate and neofascist bullshit, but the good thing about it is, the dirtbag left came out of that void to have real resistance. our political system cant be reformed peacemeal anymore. must me very radically reshifted to a more democratic manner via the force of the masses
and i think a lot of the music of this decade reflects this same timeline
the earliest new genre we had this decade was vaporwave, which really started as anti-nostalgic and detourned in how it was an appropriation n interrogation of capitalist cultural waste, trying to show how inherently numbing and boring neoliberalism can be even in “success”. ofc this, along with synthwave, turned into actual corporate nostalgia, a surface-level new-old aesthetic to be used by MTV and Activision etc. to reference their own IP history for shallow marketing. the truely futuristic revolutionary sample-based genre to come out of the same time was footwork, which expanded the limits of ghettohouse so far that it sounded nothing like what we can call house anymore, much more in line with the rabid chaotics of early jungle then anything in america then (which is why a lot of former dubstep nerds in the uk jumped on board).
the dance music intelligentsia was mostly just kinda stuck in limbo in the neoproghouse scene revolving around dixon and tale of us and all of those dudes. was a p cool sound at the time but it was very white and very cis and het and very male, and it got stale fast with the amount of publicity we got of the same 5 people all the time. probs the most damning example of that monotony was how fucking honestly, as those edgy right-wingers say, triggered dance music traditionalists were at the beginnings of PC Music and the whole bubblegum bass genre. lets be honest, we can admit now it was basicly semi-ironic eurodance for 20-something music theory nerds, it was just as white as the innervisions crowds, and even more kinda devoid of historial connection with dance music culture, but just by virtue of existing as very feminine and very queer and very overtly fun art, it pissed so many people off. holy shit
the real shift happened in the latter half of the decade when a bunch of queer emos from nyc ruined everything for the better. we didnt even settle on the term deconstructed club until like last year or smth but we sure did know they came in with their knowlege of dance music history and the inherent politics of it and decided the best way to save it was to destroy everything it was at the time and rebuild in their own image, with all the weapons they had: firearm and cannon sfx, rnb vocals, dembow riddims, trap 808s, everything. im so glad they did. even the white boy vaporwave gentrifiers hiding out in outsider house of the time have to thank them now; they wouldnt be playing electro and trance and even some hardstyle now without them. also they helped destroy the ra polls which basicly destroyed the innervisions monopoly for good.
so now we starting our true democratic liberation where we can all throw parties and all have univeral healthcare and a living wage for all and we all like happy hardcore. tbc
sory i slept only 4 hours last night but
anyway the 10s are almost over so what was it? in dance music, in music, in politics, in life, what was it? what was ur fav parts of it? what do u think we will remember about it when we do our end of the 20s thread in 10 years from now? thx <3
