To All My Lost Boys, We Rowdy: American DubstepWorld Music, Dr. Daniel JonesDecember 13th, 2012Eyob SharewIn late September, some friends and I went to see a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater, aptly named Rowdytown. The concert was to feature several famous electronic artists, includingBoulder-based dubstep/jazz fusion duo Big Gigantic, and LAs dubstep/reggae ton DJ Dillon Francis. When we arrived at the Red Rocks parking lot, I had my first glimpse at this fan base, in its size and diversity. Red Rocks had a capacity of 10,000 people, and I seemed, as stepped onto the parking lot, to be seeing the full gamut of them, the subcultures identified by attire. Hippies, hipsters, goths, Rastafarians, college greeks, hip hop fans, metal-heads, and many more people in normal dress. The density of this wide variety was perplexing, knowing that they were all going to see the same set of artists.Dubstep describes a wide variety of artists and albums. However, it can generally be described as falling under one of the two general categories: gritty, sparse English club dance music, or the stuff of American rock and roll fanslouder, aggressive, and more bass-heavy than its English cousin.Dubstep formed in the late 1990s, as a grimy splinter genre from drum and basswhich had been polished to a pop sheen1and other forms of electronic dance music based in London. The genre developed in Croydon, a borough of South London, and used darker, sparser mixes than drum and bass of the late 1990s, with more emphasis on the bass. It also heavily drew elements from UK 1 Gaerig, Andrew. Dubstep 101: A US Primer. New York: Spin. September 12, 2011.garage music, which used bass drops at the middle of songs and samplings from R&B and soul music.If one is to assume that the sound of a musiculture reflects cultural and emotional norms of a culture, then the gloomy sound of dubstep was in part a reflection of the increasingly alienated and pessimistic of the youth condition in England. To be a youth in England in the early 21st century was to be subject of a dramatically shrunk, and heavily surveilling state. In the early 1980s, under the leadership of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the UK adopted a set of political theories known as neoliberalism. Much of its economic policy was based on the work of an American economist, Milton Friedman. Friedmans economic principles divorced the welfare state from most families, reducing government welfare and other services. In 2011, a UN report rated the United Kingdom the worst nation in the industrialized world to grow up, based on a compounding of social and economic indicators, including teen pregnancy, alcoholism, debt, and the prospect youths will have to afford a home and family in the future. In all of these indicators, the UK scored worse than the rest of the Western world.2 In the summer of 2011one year before London was to host the Olympic gamesthe world had a chance to glimpse at this increasing social tension; it temporarily bubbled over in a series of destructive riots in several English cities. These riots are believed to have been fueled by anger at unemployment, the increasing disparity of wealth and increasing social exclusion in the UK. Dubstep was, in an implicit way, responding to these social ills. Its origin is reminiscent of the punk rock movement that arose, in much the same locations as dubstep, during the 1970s economic crisis in the UK.As soon as dubstep began to grow in the UK, around 2002 it was exported to the United States. With the effort of Baltimore-based DJ Joe Nice and New York based Dave Q, the first 2 UNICEF. The State of the Worlds Children. New York: United Nations. February 2011.dubstep club night was established in the United States in New Yorks Dub War.3 Dubstep artists had established small followings and regular club nights in various cities around the United States, including in Denver. But, while dubstep had its watershed moment in the UK in 2006 with the release of Skreams single Midnight Request Line4, American audiences were resistant to adopting the music. There was a lack of mainstream appreciation for electronic dance music in the US, as there already was in the UK. The sparseness and subtlety of Benga could not resonate with audiences who were attending 10,000 person venues to see hip-hop and rock musicians who emphasized spectacle and fantastic amounts of energy.Dubstep may have found its tipping point in the United States in 2008, when Skrillex released his debut album, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites. Following this album, dubsteps fan base began to shift from hipsters to frat-boys5. Skrillex and his American contemporaries employed a much fuller spectrum of sound, which filled out the frequency lines...insulting the work of audio engineers6, which was much louder and more aggressive than British dubstep. This music was meant much more to be dance to with a headband than an introspective arm wave. It sounded more like rock and roll than dubstep as it was then known. This made sense, as Skrillex (or Sonny Moore) was not originally from an electronic music background, but first gained musical fame as the lead singer of screamo band, From First to Last. He widened the door on American dubstep, and through it flew artists including 12th Planet, Rusko, and Bassnectar7.By 2010, dubstep artists (including those who had packed ship from England) were headlining large American music festivals, such as the dance music-based Electric Daisy Carnival, 3 Hammond, Bob. How low can it go?: The evolution of dubstep. New York: New York Magazine. July 20, 2008.4 Hampton, Justin B. Dubstep: music dark enough to tug the guts. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Times. April 12, 2007.5 Pelly, Liz. Interview: James Blakes dub soft-shoe. Boston: Boston Pheonix. Sep 28 2011. 6 Fuse. Why Deadmau5 hates dubstep. Oct 5 2012. Video.7 Gaerig, Andrew. Dubstep 101: A US Primer. New York: Spin. September 12, 2011.to traditionally rock-based Lollapalooza. As one artist put it, in America, the road to national fame and fortune, the work was already done, American music fans already had a long tradition coming to regional music venues or national festivals, where numbers would reach over 100,0008. The music needed to sustain these crowdsoften for days at a timerequired a wiping away of the subtlety that appealed to British audiences. The size and diversity of fans of American dubstep is result of its broad musical origins. Early dubstep artists came from backgrounds in dub, hip-hop, 2-step, and R&B, and a typical dubstep will feature these samplings of these genres as well, compounded into the seismic wobbling bass, andoften the the topic of conversation people have about their favorite artistscathartic drops in the middle of songs. In October, I interviewed the sub.mission dubstep crew of Denver, a close-knit circle of DJs and promoters that has been a mainstay of Denvers dubstep scene since 2006. We discussed why dubstep, being electronic dance music, was able to grow so popular in the US, a nation known for its resistance to popular acceptance of electronic dance musicwhich has had strong fan bases around the world for a long time.One of the crews DJs, named Andrew, saw it as a a musically technical reason:When people walk into a drum and bass, or techno show, its to ravey or to fast for them. Theres something about the slower, 140 beats per minute [in dubstep], and the bass that doesnt scare you off instantly. Its like a blank canvas where you can attach any genre to it instantly, it brings in a lot of different groups and different walks of life.The crews leader, Nicole added:8 Dodero, Cammile. Summer of Wub: Inside the Dubstep Boom. Spin. August 30, 2012.Theres no sub-genreizing in dubstepunlike drum and bass where youve got your jungle, garage, and 2-stepfor dubstep its all just dubstep. Because of the blast, marketing, money, and so many genres that make dubstep music, its basically able to absorb so many people into it. All of this music will fall under this umbrella term of dubstep.In the background, a DJ synthesized a build-up over sampled R&B, with lyrical mantras about loss and moving on. The stage was small, and the crowd non-reacting.For dubstep to become such a commercial success in the US, it had to adopt characteristics of the American music and what appealed to the American audiences especially, in addition to absorbing the many styles of music. Many fans of these other genres adopted dubstep as the next natural evolution of these various genres. After the beginning of the first song at Rowdytown, I realized I had no idea how to dance.How do you dance to this stuff?, I asked my friend Sam, who was distracted by an upcoming bass drop. It turns out that 140 beats per minute is well-attuned to movement of the human body. It seemed as if everyone had been doing some sort of dance or physical response since they walked into the venue. It doesnt fucking matter! Just do your own thing, he yelled. As the bass began to angle upward, the song was quickly building up. Everyones doing their own thing!Suddenly, the bass drop came. An industrial noise like a jet engine roared over a crowd, followed by the watery, sinewy sounds of wobble bass in a half-time feel. I was later told was created by extended a pre-recorded bass track over a very long time and putting it through a low-frequency oscillator, that warped away any aural resemblance to pitch. It was loud. I had been to concerts at Red Rocks before, but none where the lowest frequencies rattled my ribs and gut like this one.After the drop ended, and the song returned to cruise control for its next build-up, and Sam offered me a tutorial in physical response.Uh, you know, you can basically just do this. He showed me a dance he was doing. Sam lifted his arm up, leaned back on his shoulders and waved his hand back and forth in the air; it looked like a barren, long tree branch, whipping with and against quick and short gusts. Indeed, this was how most people were dancing at the show, even while they were doing their own thing. I never saw anyone doing anything unique. There is a dichotomy within dubstep that this dancing showed me. It is between the beliefs that everybodys doing their own thing, and the fact that many seem to be doing about the same. Its why, despite the droves in people in normal dress, there seems no second thought given to persons dressed in extravagant neon rave outfits, or dressed up as hippie robots. Individuality and conformity seem to co-exist. This seems not to be just true in the dancing, but in the sometimes formulaic song and concert structure of some widely knownthough not all widely knownartists. This is a theme that may be extrapolated from facets of American culture. So called hipster and emo subcultures are criticized for their tendency to enforce conformity while calling themselves different. One can also look at mass-produced suburbs where many Americans livesuburban living is both praised as an embodiment of the American Dream, living as a shameless individual, and criticized as an illusion of conformity. At Rowdytown, I found myself dancing with a girl who didnt bother pronouncing my name.So what made you want to come to the show? I asked. She pointed to our left, in the direction of an airport terminal-sized red boulder, one of two at Red Rocks. We both stared. From the stage, humongous 3D light projections were being flown onto the rock, morphing from a pixelated Colorado flag to Pac-Manesque ghosts that looked like they were flying to the audience, the sequence continued, and looked like a 3D Radiohead album cover nightmare.I heard the lights were gonna be cool. She seemed underwhelmed by them. Im looking for ecstasy, and she walked away.The sub.mission crew and I discussed technology at the concerts.The kids these days, they go to a DJ show, and they expect not just DJ music, but they want a full concert, with the lights, and everything, Nicole explained. When we bring the real sound, the real DJing stuff, we can have about 400 people. When we bring what the kids want, we get 3,000 to 10,000 depending on the venue. As the audience has grown, as well as the sub.mission name, we have to support that fan base as well as the grassroots that we came from.She went on to say, The merge of the underground and mainstream introduces drugs into the scene...lights and the culture of lights verses the culture of darknessBack home in Denver, I am in a close-knit circle of musicians. In this circle of friends, dubstep culture is condescendingly spoken down to: with the fascination it seems to have with light shows, its prolific casual drug use, and its nuclear audio-engineering. It appears now, that all these things are part of a broad theme of technology use in dubstep. And the technology use is a facet of the hyper-stimulated character of American dubstep, unique to the American scene.This hyper stimulationexisting in everything from the atom-bomb bass drops, to the ecstasy and drug use, to the the sheer size of the 10,000 person concertsand was in part inherited from music already popular with American audiences. These things run parallel to the jet engine-loud setups of rock shows before, and the rapid succession of lights that would fill the arenas of musicians playing them. Similarly, there was a hyper stimulative, machoistic tendency of American rock and metal bands. The believe in diversity and communal independence may have been borrowed from American culture itself, in a nation that more or less accepts its diversity and staunchly asserts its independence. The meeting of these things would allow dubstep in its early forms, to transform and succeed in the United States as American dubstep. The girl looking for ecstasy came back. She grabbed my hips and we started dancing as she told me about her search. She found a person claiming to have molly, and she bought it. It was only crushed sugar cubes. She said:I dont really care. No one really cares.For me to have come from a circle of friends back home with such unique, and even obscuremusical preferences, choosing to explore dubstep was choosing to to explore music for what was, to me, a new reasonbecause it was popular. Coming to college, I was exposed to the extent of dubsteps popularity within the first weekend: hearing it blast from dorm room windows, hearing the conversations people struck up about their favorite DJs at the dining center, and hearing Ghostland Observatory for the freshman welcome concert, my first electronic music concert. Exploring dubstep may have ended up being a part of my adjustment to college life itself, allowing me to appreciate music that so many of my peers had a common interest in.Learning about the dubstep culture also made something clear to me: music follows cultural norms, including non-musical ones. Finding the correlation between the UKs growing social ills and the pessimistic sound of music at the time proved this to me. In this regard, I will continue to look at music from parallel angles in the future.Many of the fans I spoke to over the semester were not fans of electronic music before dubstep, rather coming from backgrounds in pop, hip hop, rock and so on. One fan I spoke to at Rowdytown has this to say:Its really the new metal. I was always a metal head.Many see dubstep as the natural evolution of their favorite music, albeit with implicit changes in structure and timbre, and a love of the cathartic drops. I think that, as we begin to move into the era of post-dubstepas it finally does, contrary to the words of Nicole at sub.mission, begin to sub-genreizewell see these elements of dubstep become a mainstay of popular music for a long time; in the same way that rock-and-roll and hip-hop did in the past.