What do you call an american educated chinaman living in germany who spins among other things african music ???...confused??? nah Zhao.
A disciple of all things ambient and ethnic who mashes up world music with various forms of moody electronica to illuminating effect. He's also been known to tee of on things that grate his worldview. Here is a classic rant that inspired some intelligent debate from his blog
More Gripes
Against Drawing Lines
this blog, indeed my entire musical project, is about the blurring of, and hopefully completely doing away with, all lines which separate us and our sensibilities.
all lines are arbitrary and all separation is illusion. they are fictions invented to keep us apart, and remain our greatest collective enemy. i will provide an argument for this from a biological perspective at a later date, on the same river, but for now:
• all you modern classical people stop dismissing techno as stupid machine nonsense for kids on drugs. this is pure ignorance.
• all you beat heads take some time to explore the "werid" stuff on this blog.
• experimental sound freaks stop being afraid of hiphop and grime: testosterone is as valid as estrogen, that's why we have both.
Against Prejudice
also, i would like to ask the people who say they love music made on "real instruments", by "real musicians":
have you ever heard an idiot say, perhaps with drool dripping from his chin, that Free Jazz or improvised music is easy, and that anyone can do it?
well, that's exactly what you sound like when you say the same thing about what DJ's do.
of course there are bullshit djs (as there are bullshit jazz musicians); and some of them, for whatever reasons, make it big. but a real DJ (yes, like me) plays the roles of Historian, Archivist, Ethnologist, Curator, Choreographer, AS WELL AS Entertainer and Performer.
so you think it's "easy" to "play records"? how about next time there are 500 people gathered in a big room, who all paid money to dance non-stop for the next 8 hours, i give YOU 2 turntables and see what happens. i will laugh my ass off when the bottles start flying and your legs turn to jelly after 15 minutes.
and people like this always have a big chip on their shoulder about how much money some DJ's make -- presumably in comparison to how little they make as a "real musician" (boo fucking hoo) -- "and all they're doing is playing other people's music!!!". well let me ask you another question: do you think gallery or museum curators should get paid well? after all, they're only hanging other people's art on a wall, aren't they?!?
i can not believe how much of this condescending, bigoted and ignorant bullshit i have heard over the years, being a dj who happens to have serious respect for, and have met lots of people from, other musical disciplines. and most people who say things like this do not even go to dance clubs -- so please do us all a favor: stop spraying your stupid opinions about subjects of which you know nothing.
rant over.
...not to rain on his parade tho but i reckon playin rekkids aint that hard eh
No comments:
Post a Comment