idle gaze 005: the part brands play in the erasure of dance music culture.
And why they should think twice about that Boiler Room partnership.
Welcome to idle gaze, a newsletter exploring brands and marketing through the lens of high and low culture, mixing the obscure undercurrents of the web with mainstream discourse.
The formerly niche subculture of dance music has long been a battleground for brands who want to stay culturally relevant. And in this pursuit of relevance, a common trick of the trade has been partnering with music publications and curators.
Ubisoft game launches together with MixMag. Seemingly every booze brand on the planet sponsoring a Boiler Room livestream. Nike, Asahi, WeTransfer collaborating with Resident Advisor on events and content series. These platforms are counted on to curate and represent what’s happening at the creative front line, with the hopes of propelling the brand into the cultural zeitgeist.
Corporate involvement in the genre is nothing new, and neither is the awareness of the problems this creates for the musicians and subcultures that are railroaded by businesses that so desperately want to associate themselves with what’s interesting.
But the issue has been pushed to the fore once again. Recently, UK-based techno producer R.O.S.H (Roshan Chauhan) published a “Letter to RA”, the culmination of 3+ years of research done by Roshan on the role of the UK music press and its relationship with the Black & working-class dance music scenes, unearthing systematic injustices over the last decade in UK reportage, with a focus on platforms including the flagship electronic music publication Resident Advisor, but also implicating Mixmag and Boiler Room.
Rosh tells a tale of two different realities:
“On one side I can see an active and diverse scene filled with a loyal and passionate grass roots audience; filled with talented, hardworking DJs, promoters, and label heads who grind away while their progress is sadly limited by external forces largely invisible to them.
On the other side I see a machine of journalists, industry heads and artists, where international touring schedules, organised press coverage and regular visits to British Airways lounges are the norm.”
Through interviews and historical analysis, Roshan's study uncovered how whole genres, like UK Funky and Deep tech - despite attracting nationwide black and working-class communities - were largely dismissed and ignored in favour of genres more easily digestible by a white, middle-class audience.
Still from a Nike x Resident Advisor event
So what happens when the “cool-by-association” music-media-business complex, often funded by seven-figure brand partnership deals, has been found to perpetuate a narrative that excludes black, working-class and minority cultures operating in the scene?
Who is fighting to shine a light on the music culture that lives beyond the commercialized storyline? And what can brands do to make a positive impact and represent the true diversity of a genre?
1) Create weird and wonderful spaces for artists to thrive.
Back in the 2000s, Red Bull Music Academy was in many ways the perfect blueprint for corporate patronage of music subcultures. RBMA was set up to support up and coming musicians when no one else would — offering them studio and on-air time, lectures and headline slots with essentially zero expectation of repayment or brand loyalty.
As music journalist Jonno Seidler writes in Junkee:
“enmeshed into the fabric of the alternative/electronic world since its late ’90s inception, RBMA for many musicians [was] seen as one reliable place for them to express and flex their weird and wonderful ideas without bending to anyone’s rules”
RBMA was dismantled back in 2019. It’s time for a successor to rise up who is willing to offer a blank checkbook and a true appetite for music and culture, no strings attached.
2) Go beyond the cultural gatekeepers to give minority collectives a voice.
Give minority collectives a voice, instead of relying on “cultural gatekeepers” like music publications and platforms. There’s plenty of collectives out there striving to give the underrepresented a platform. Like Discwoman, a New York-based organization and booking agency representing cis women, trans women, and genderqueer talent in the electronic music community. Or Haus of Altr, a record label founded by producer MoMA Ready, which strives to “assume the role of Vanguard in the war against white supremacy in electronic music.”
3) Support the rewriting of music culture.
Championing minority groups isn't just about aligning with what's happening in the present, but also about educating people about the past.
In 2018 Gucci backed the launch and promotion of Everybody In the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992, a historical rave documentary by visual artist and director Jeremy Deller. The film situates illegal raves and acid house at the very center of the social changes upending the 1980s, deliberately going beyond the mainstream, middle-class myth of dance music’s origins.
From Everybody In the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992
4) Acknowledge the political roots of dance music
Dance music has distinct roots in political activism in the early nineties, established in radical Black politics, intended as an Afrofuturist statement via the use of drum machines. But decades past has seen the reappropriation of the genre by the global festival circuit, corporate sponsorship and large scale gentrification, spanning decades, which means most people associate electronic music with partying and hedonism.
In the mainstream spotlight, fashion, booze and lifestyle players left right and centre are sponsoring events with predominantly white, male-dominated celebrity DJ lineups. But in the fringes, there’s independent collectives and activists spearheading a change in the dominant narratives around dance music.
Take Deforrest Brown Jr, a NYC based writer and producer, who together with Luz Fernandez, run Make Techno Black Again, a collective currently making an impact in the wider cultural conversation, “celebrating the origins of Techno and its roots in cities like Detroit and the African-American working class experience.” (MTBA wad recently features in The New Yorker).
But don’t expect those that are seeking to change the state of play to embrace the involvement of a business unless they’re ready to acknowledge and support music as an instrument of social change rather than a vehicle for a brand identity.