Nostalgia, Innovation, and Non-Western Electronica: An Unrelated Analysis

I’ve already discussed at length how music, and especially electronic music, has had an interesting relationship with nostalgia in recent years. In my previous articles, I mentioned how drum n bass, house, and UK garage are coming back in a big way, a trend that can be seen from Beyonce to PinkPantheress to Drake. Bass Music (think Skrillex’s most recent albums) and Trance are also poised to become increasingly popular once more. This trend seems especially relevant in the US, where until recently they, and most other genres of electronica, were not historically taken as seriously as other genres. As far as I’m concerned, I’m glad that electronica is having its day in the sun in the US, regardless of the causes. Truly, it feels justified, even redemptive, that these genres are being appreciated in America after over three decades of being less popular than in many European countries. The reasons for America’s relative distaste for dance music deserve an article of their own, but it seems plausible to suggest that a large part of the reason for the commercial rejection of dance music was its origins in queer spaces and communities of color. 

So while it’s great that pop music is finally giving Western electronica the respect it deserves, it would’ve been even better if this music had been given the time of day when it was still being made in the communities of its origin. Of course, there will continue to be innovative American electronic music, but with the continued profitability of nostalgia-bait, it seems unlikely that it will be as popular in the mainstream as music that was innovative 30 years ago. One positive of this, though, is that it has allowed new, non-Western voices and cultures to become the primary innovators of electronica, flipping old hegemonies on their head in the process. While the West looks to the past, the people outside of it have their eyes firmly on a new, different future.

In my view, this is not an insignificant shift. With the democratization of music production resources, the West can no longer maintain its cultural stranglehold on the world, particularly when it is more interested in looking backward than forward. In its place, producers from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia have been a new force of innovation in music, using the full potential of modern production technology to make something that sounds truly new and distinct. Take Tarraxo, a blend of Angolan rhythms and Portuguese language; Singeli, incredibly fast East African music; GQOM and Amapiano, both genres originating from South Africa that can loosely be described as offshoots of house: these are only a few of the diverse genres of electronic music that have been created in African communities in recent years. Labels like NAAFI and TraTraTrax have provided spaces for Latin American artists to create electronic music that is not merely an extension of the Western, Anglophone sound. And artists like FINGERGAP, Hyph11e, and metoronori are creating uniquely Asian music, while Molotof and Hazem B, among others, are creating music that blends electronica and traditional Middle Eastern sounds. With all this innovation in the past 10 years alone, it’s interesting how relatively unknown these genres are in the American mainstream.

It’s interesting how similar non-Western electronica is treated in America to the way electronic dance music was treated in the 80s and 90s. Without an established profit structure, large US labels have little interest in supporting innovation from non-Western artists and artists of color. Of course, these genres (and non-Western pop music) are known in the US: many artists who make them perform at underground venues or more culturally specific festivals, and I personally know a fair amount of music enthusiasts who are fans of these genres. I’ve even heard some of these genres ‘in the wild’; I was extremely giddy to hear amapiano log drums in a standard club and tarraxo rhythms in a makeup shop of all places (though these both happened to me while I was in London, not in the US). Still, despite anecdotal evidence of some sort of adoption of these genres in the West, I don’t think it would be exactly controversial to say that these genres haven’t reached the commercial peaks that older, Western genres like house and drum n bass have enjoyed recently.

This isn’t what bothers me, though. It makes sense that new genres may take some time to catch on, especially when they come from a different culture with different musical conventions and traditions. What really scares me, I think, is that these genres will eventually become popular in the West, but only when it becomes profitable. I’m afraid that when this happens, these genres will be whitewashed; scrubbed of the places, cultures, and people that originally created it, non-Western electronic music will become another non-threatening piece of artificial nostalgia that will ultimately make for great and uncomplicated pop music. Admittedly, it’s even more uncomfortable for me given that I legitimately enjoy a lot of the present cultural nostalgia-bait, and it problematizes my appreciation for genres whose inception happened before I was even alive. 

At the end of the day, though, I’m not going to stop liking the current electronic revival just because it was economically convenient for major labels; what I’m more concerned with is sharing great and underappreciated music while it still is in the hands of its creators. Perhaps there is some irony in the fact that I am not part of the communities the music is coming from, but I’d still rather listen to and champion non-Western electronica now than when it is cheaply sold back to me in twenty years by an American record label executive. But who knows? We can only hope that this time will be different: the pattern of appropriation will break, systems of profit and oppression will be changed, and innovative and popular music will be one and the same.