Composing EDMC

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Composing EDMC

• Possession Trance Methods in Urban Electronic
  Folk Music Culture

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• Dr. Rupert Till
• Senior Lecturer in Music Technology
• University of Huddersfield
• DJ, club promoter, clubber, since 1991
• Live chill out band Chillage People - album on
  i-tunes, tracks on Liquid Sound Design Ambient
  Planet vol.1
• BA Performing Arts (music), MA Music Technology
  (composition), (PhD composition)
• Offer research supervision in club club culture
  musicology, cultural studies, ethnomusicology,
  composition, electronica and music technology on
  MA in Computer Composition MMus Contemporary
  Music Studies and MPhil / PhD

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We will be passing through

• Definitions Methodology
• Physicality Duality
• Lineage
• The Homeless Self and Communitas
• Possession Trance Methodology
• A small experiment for you to take part in
• Trance Symptoms
• Theory - what is going on?

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Methodology

• There are many different ways to approach popular
  music studies-
• Ethnomusicology - field work in clubs -
  participant observation / emic
• Musicology - describe/analyse the harmony,
  timbres, structure, melody, rhythm
• Critical Musicology includes context
• Cultural Studies - investigate surrounding
  culture
• Sociology/anthropology - look at the people
• Historical - trace lineage

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Club Culture or EDMC

• Club Culture comes from Sarah Thorntons first
  book on topic, discussing subcultural capital
• From Birmingham schools discussion of
  subculture, Hebdiges Subculture the meaning of
  style
• EDMC is Electronic Dance Music Culture. Graham
  St. John and others (including me) prefer this
  term as it includes non-club events such as
  festivals
• Dance music includes ballet, tarantellas
• Rave large scale events c.1989 - 1992 early
  commercialisation of acid house in UK, dated term
  used by media. Dont use this term.

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EDMC is a possession trance cult

• How does music act
• to send people into a trance?
• What techniques are used?

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Trance Method

• Musicians induce trance in participants
• Musicians do not go into trance
• Shamanic trance - Shaman makes own music and
  trances alone
• Possession trance - musicians make music,
  dancer(s) trance
• EDMC possession trance

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Silencing the inner voice

• A trance is deep listening, when the inner
  narrative is silenced
• Music does this in general, keeps the brain busy
• Rhythms are important
• As is Dancing
• Nodding / headbanging is very common in
  traditional trance cultures

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I could make the people dance

• African American music such as funk and disco has
  interlocking complex rhythms

This rhythm is very common in African and Latin
Music. It creates off beats and
syncopation There is also complex interaction of
duple and triple time (3 or 4)
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Ewe Tribe Rhythm

• bell  GO GO GO GO GO GO
  GO
• clap  dzi dzi dzi
  dzi
• Both(B) GO dzi GO GO dzi GO (B)
  GO

Top part is

Lower Part is simply three quavers This
combination includes multiple time signatures and
syncopation, disguise and confusion of where the
first beat of the bar lies, confusion of phrase
lengths. When dancing the body is put into and
then removed from being synchronised to the beat.
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Its oh so quiet

• Lets have a few seconds silence.
• Did you have thoughts running through your head?
  An internal conversation? Hearing voices?
• We are going to try using rhythmic interlocking
  parts to try to still your mind and begin the
  process of trance.

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Dr. Chills Experiment

• For this to work you need to all close your eyes
  when I tell you, and not open them again until I
  say.
• You also have to believe in yourselves, that you
  look fantastic and feel great (which is of course
  true)
• Feel free to adapt the instructions if you need
  to, but try to go with what I suggest
• Stand up and Close your eyes
• Place parts of a beat in the body

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Everybody dance now

• Head upwards on hi-hat crotchet beats
• 4 to the floor BD crotchets in the knees
• On 1 3 shaker left and right foot
• Head nod forward on 2 4 clap part
• Triplet rhythms bass part in hands, left right
  alternating or three of each
• Now add in the ewe tribe syncopated rhythm on a
  high synth to another part of the body while
  maintaining the others. Try your shoulders, hips
  or belly
• Im going to add some echo effects try to include
  them
• Keeping dancing, now open your eyes. Look around,
  smile at someone, know that they are not judging
  you, everything is ok.

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Dr. Chills experiment (cont.)

• Maintaining these multiple rhythms in the body,
  keeps the left brain busy and allows the more
  instinctive side freedom
• This is of course a very simple rhythm not a
  complex piece of dance music.
• Sensory deprivation (eyes shut) is an important
  part of achieving a trance state
• While doing that did the internal converation
  stop?

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Things to note

• Repetition important and exact
• So small changes can seem large
• Large changes can be huge
• The Ewe tribe rhythm repeats after 6 bars,
  creating a contradiction in phrase length
• It is in these subtleties that one must search to
  understand the important elements of dance music
• Build up happens over time - over an hour/more
  once beatmixed records built up by DJ in set

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Other musical elements

• Echoes add extra layers of rhythm
• Gradual changes in timbre over time as
  repetitions happen
• Filter sweeps produce motion over time
• Often little harmony in the music, like funk or
  African Polyphony
• interlock of parts important

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Donna Summer. listen for the triplets
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Another World

• Electronic and enveloping sounds draw the
  listener into an alien/other world
• Boom Festival has a liminal village
• characterised by ambiguity, openness and
  indeterminacy. Ones sense of identity dissolves
  to some extent bringing about disorientation.
  Liminality is a period of transition, during
  which your normal limits to thought,
  self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed,
  opening the way to something new. According to
  the anthropologist Victor Turner the liminal
  stage of a ritual is a period during which one is
  Betwixt and between, Neither here nor there
• Boom Festival, Boom Festival 2006 Website,
  available at http//www.boomfestival.org/afterboom
  06/index.html/ Accessed 10 July 2007

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Another World

• Another term used in this context is the
  Temporary Autonomous Zone
• Hakim Bey, T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone,
  Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, (Brooklyn,
  1985).

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Cyborg Planet

• by destroying a sense of self, the merging with
  technology becomes a cyborgian rite of passage
  which needs to be repeated for as long as the
  identity crisis prevails
• Hillegonda Rietveld, Sacrificial Cyborg and
  Communal Soul, in Graham St. John (ed.), Rave
  Culture and Religion, (Abingdon, 2004), p. 59.
• Voices are processed to sound electronic
• Computer repetition is exact and robotic, humanly
  impossible
• Sci-fi computer noises common. Techno aesthetic
• EDMC is urban folk music in the age of mechanical
  reproduction

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Enhancing the Trance

• Overloading - high volume/bass overloads the
  inputs of the brain and physically vibrates body
  cavities
• Volume and tempo increases are used in
  traditional trance cultures and in EDMC -
  breakdown sections followed by builds in volume,
  snare rolls, pause then BOOM!

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Other elements

• Cultural Expectation - setting, sacred space,
  sacred or meaningful musical references
• Use of flashing lights, strobes, mandalas,
  psychedelic patterns, entoptic imagery, fractals,
  entoptic imagery, turing patterns

Hyper-ventilation raised heart and breathing rate
can alone cause trances
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Lasers (above) Mandala (right)
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(some) drug taking leads to trance

• Ecstasy (MDMA) - It floods the brain with
• serotonin, the chemical related in the brain to
  happiness and well-being, and
• dopamine, which stimulates motor activity, speeds
  up the metabolism, causing overheating, filling
  the person with energy, encourages them (in an
  EDMC context) to dance for hours on end, and
  creates euphoria.
• Changes brain chemistry - linked to mood swings,
  depression
• Also other drugs/polydrug esp. cocaine/ketamine
• Serotonin and psychedelics keyhole trance effect

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Summary of music

• Low frequencies at loud levels
• Repetition, polyrhythm, multiple time signatures,
  disguise of downbeat, syncopation, variation
  within
• Volume and tempo increases
• High tempo
• Link/sync with other artforms and cultural
  references

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Other dance forms

• Drumnbass
• Same cultural expectation
• Same rhythmic interlock
• Same techno aesthetic
• Same triplets
• Same 5 followed by quaver crotchet 3

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Crisis

• Crisis leads to and preceeds trance
• Crisis of homeless self
• Crisis often caused by/related to disorientating
  early stages of drug effects
• (aka coming up)
• Collapse (having to sit/lie down)

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Symtoms of Entrancement

• After the crisis passes there is a
• Loss of time
• Shaking/trembling
• Eyes rolling
• Pupil dilation
• Unusual movements

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Body sync

• Entrainment
• The synchronisation of two rhythms
• Two clocks on a board may find their pendulums
  synchronise
• Heartbeat may synchronise to the music (from
  field work interviews)
• Brainwaves may synchronise to music tempo

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Tempi

• Dance music ranges from 115 - 180bpm (120 - 160
  common)
• This corresponds to a raised hearbeat like a
  sustained cardio-vascular workout
• It is no coincidence 130 bpm is a common EDM
  tempo and heart rate when doing a strenous
  workout

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• What is going on?

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The Homeless Self

• A world once charged with religious significance
  had been disenchanted by the tremendous cosmos
  of the modern economic order
• Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
  Capitalism (London, 1992), p. 104, quoted in
  Ehrenreich pp. 1434.

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The Homeless Self

• Existential crisis since the Enlightenment /
  reformation
• Individualisation of society, deconstruction of
  traditional communities and meaning,
  disenchantment of life, global communication
  fracturing culture
• Adds up to create homelessness
• Heelas, P. and Woodhead, L., Homeless Minds
  Today? in Peter Berger and the Study of
  Religion, Woodhead, L.,, Heelas, P., and Martin,
  D. (eds), (London, 2001).

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Liquid Modernity post-enlightenment

• postmodernity brings re-enchantment of the
  world after the protracted and earnest, though in
  the end inconclusive, modern struggle to
  dis-enchant it Dignity has been returned to
  emotions legitimacy to the inexplicable, nay
  irrational, sympathies and loyalties which cannot
  explain themselves in terms of their usefulness
  and purpose. Fear of the void has been blunted
  and assuaged we learn to learn to live with
  events and acts that are inexplicable. Some of
  us would even say that it is such events and acts
  that constitute the hard, irremovable core of the
  human predicament.
• Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, (Oxford,
  1993), p. 33.

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• One solution is a transgressive EDMC it provides
  
• Communitas The spontaneous love and solidarity
  that can arise within a community of equals
• Victor Turner. The Ritual Process Structure and
  Anti-Structure. Ithaca, NY Cornell University
  Press. 1966
• Collective Effervescence The ritually induced
  passion or ecstasy that cements social bonds
  forms the ultimate basis of religion
• Emile Durkheim. The Elementary Forms of Religious
  Life. New York Free Press. 1915

(See Ehrenreich)
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EDMC is universal?

• The importance of music in ritual, and, as it
  were, in addressing the supernatural. This seems
  to me to be truly a universal, shared by all
  known societies, however different the sound.
  Another universal is the use of music to provide
  some kind of fundamental change in an
  individuals consciousness, or in the ambiance of
  a gathering.And it is virtually universally
  associated with dance not all music is danced,
  but there is hardly any dance that is not in some
  sense accompanied by music.
• Bruno Nettl, An Ethnomusicologist Contemplates
  Musical Universals, in Nils L. Wallin, Bjorn
  Merker, Steven Brown (eds), The Origins of Music,
  (Cambridge, 2000), p. 469.

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Ehrenreich p.18

• These ingredients of ecstatic rituals and
  festivities music, dancing, eating, drinking or
  indulging in other mind-altering drugs, costuming
  and/or various forms of self-decoration, such as
  face and body painting seem to be universal

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Why is it in this form?
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Duality Physicality

• Cartesian duality - body bad/mind good - St.
  Augustine brings neoplatonic/Manichean
  influences, original sin sex between Adam
  Eve, negative attitude to body spread via
  Calvinism across western culture
• I think therefore I am - I feel therefore I am -
  I am
• Development of homeless self
• Oppositional relationship in Western Culture
  between church and dancing, sacred and profane -
  Dancing in the Streets, Barbara Ehrenreich

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Blues vs. Gospel

• This duality made more explicit in African
  American culture
• Blues linked to Juke (or Jook) joints
• Centres of music, alcohol, dancing, drugs,
  gambling, prostitution
• Gospel music culture key site of African
  American cultural heritage
• But does not have such a negative attitude to the
  body

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Clubbing lineage

• Blues / jazz / gospel
• Soul
• Funk
• Disco
• Ska / rocksteady / reggae
• Hip Hop
• House
• All appropriated by white culture
• Feminised dancefloor culture is then undanced by
  male dominated music industry until DISCO

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Transgressional Disco

• Stonewall The Riots That Sparked The Gay
  Revolution, David Carter
• Riots centred around a gay bar
• The right to dancing together in public became a
  political issue - sexualised atmosphere
• The Sanctuary club opened in an old church
• Gay clubs created blueprint for clubs - Studio
  54, the Loft, Paradise Garage
• Big sound systems, lighting effects, all night
  dancing, drug taking, 2 record decks, DJ culture,
  Latin influence, use of synths, polyrhythmic,
  transgressional, underground, gospel/religious
  undertones

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The big (not so) secret

• EDMC
• is
• Disco

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Underground Desire

• EDMC is therefore transgressional - oppositional
  to mainstream culture
• Disrespect for aura of recording and performer
• Dancing as focus not pop icons or stardom
• DJ Culture, by Ulf Poshardt, DJ as performer,
  creates new texts from vinyl records, which act
  as texts themselves
• Membership of a secretive club / cult - This is
  Our House by Hillegonda Rietveld, club as home.
  DJ as curator. Initiation, belonging.
• Cottage industry outside of music industry.

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What do the theorists say?

• Hillegonda Rietveld, Sacrificial Cyborg and
  Communal Soul, in Graham St. John (ed.), Rave
  Culture and Religion, (Abingdon, 2004), p. 59.

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What do the theorists say?

• Gilbert Rouget, Music and Trance a Theory of the
  Relations between Music and Possession (Chicago
  1985).
• Possession Trance requires cultural expectations.
  Musicians cause dancing, dancing brings about
  trance.
• Shamanic Trance involves Shaman making their own
  music and is generally indivdual

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What do the theorists say?

• In Rave Culture and Religion, Rave as religious
  fete or celebration (Gaultier), or New
  Religious Movement aka Cult (Olaveson)

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What do the theorists say?

• Global Tribe Religion, Technology, and Trance
  Culture, (forthcoming) Graham St. John describes
  4 areas in trance music of Tribes, ritual,
  trance hope
• Describes Fearless leaps into uncertainty
• And theories of Neo-tribes
• St. John carries out huge amount of field work,
  spends his life travelling to EDMC events and
  then writing up
• Also Technomad Global Raving Countercultures on
  techno-tribes

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What do the theorists say?

• Gordon Lynch and Emily Badger, The Mainstream
  Post Rave Scene as a Secondary Institution A
  British Perspective, Culture and Religion
  Journal, 7/1 (2006) 27 40
• Secondary institutions have no order of things
  to be obeyed and therefore provide much greater
  freedom for people to exercise autonomy
• Heelas and Woodhead, p.53
• unlike a primary institution like the Catholic
  Church

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What do the theorists say?

• Francois Gauthier, Orpheus and the Underground
  Raves and Implicit Religion From Interpretation
  to Critique, Implicit Religion, 8/3 (2005) 217
  265
• Implicit religion uses techniques developed to
  study religion to study those things that do not
  present themselves as religious but secular,
  although they seem clearly to be religious, such
  as atheism or being vegan.

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What do the theorists say?

• Robin Sylvan, Trance Formation The Spiritual and
  Religious Dimensions of Dimensions of Global Rave
  Culture (Abingdon, 2005).
• Cultural religion combined with Oceanic
  experience

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What do the theorists say?

• Perhaps it was millenium fever?
• Tonight Im gonna party like its 1999.
• Prince - Purple Rain

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What do I think?

• Possession Trance Ritual in Electronic Dance
  Music Culture A Popular Ritual Technology for
  Reenchantment, Addressing the Crisis of the
  Homeless Self, and Reinserting the Individual
  into the Community,
• in Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media
  Age, ed. Chris Deacy, Ashgate, Forthcoming.
• Club culture is a contemporary form of possession
  trance, containing remnants of African culture
  transmitted from African American culture. It is
  a response to the crisis of the homeless self, a
  result of a Cartesian dualistic approach to the
  body.

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What do I think?

• We are unnaturally resisting our connection with
  the cosmos, with the world, with mankind, with
  the nation, with the family We cannot bear
  connection. That is our malady. We must break
  away, and be isolate. We call that being free,
  being individual. Beyond a certain point, which
  we have reached, it is suicide. Perhaps we have
  chosen suicide.
• D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on
  Revelation, Mara Calnins (ed.), (Cambridge, 2002),

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What do I think?

• To dance is to inscribe music in space, and this
  inscription is realised by means of a constant
  modification of the relations between the various
  parts of the body. The dancers awareness of his
  body is totally transformed by this process.
  Insofar as it is a spur to dancing, therefore,
  music does appear to be capable of profoundly
  modifying the relation of the self with itself,
  or, in other words, the structure of
  consciousness. Psychologically music also
  modifies the experience of being, in space and
  time simultaneously.
• Rouget, p. 121.

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What do I think?

• The possession cult of EDMC is an artefact of
  the post-enlightenment. (call it postmodernity,
  posthistorical or liquid times, the modernists
  can stay in the past with their high modernity).
• It is part of reconstruction and reenchantment,
  of the new reformation.
• It is taking on roles fulfilled in the past by
  mainstream religions.

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Any Questions?Dr. Rupert TillR.Till_at_hud.ac.uk
or google me!