Booka Shade and the Birth of Electro

Tonight, I will be seeing/dancing/being in the proximity of one of my favourite electro/house groups- Booka Shade from Frankfurt. Here is something to listen to and nothing to watch, Mandarine Girl by Booka Shade.

In high school I held strong opinions denying the status of "music" to anything with an electronic beat. Punk had taken its toll- largely in the shape of sore neck muscles, large blue/purple hair and a notion that "society" was something to be yelled about. A fortuitous meeting with a jazz guitar teacher ignited a revolution in taste and within months I was listening to jazz divas and big bands. Still, electronic music seemed rather too much like the soundtrack to car racing games to be of any interest. Hip hop DJs built the bridge for me, but it wasn't until I came to Europe, the global heart of electronic music, that I started to differentiate between genres, styles and quality, to discern what I liked and what to avoid. Now I'm fairly able to unpack the amorphous and rather hilarious genre descriptions of the electro world such as "happy hardcore", "goa trance" and "intelligent drum-and-bass". But there is one style that forms my nemesis, a style that has risen to immense popularity during my time in Amsterdam such that it is almost unavoidable on any given evening, a style known by its adherents and dark practitioners as "minimal techno".

To understand the travesty that is minimal techno, I have to take you back to the very beginnings of techno. And here's the catch, like veritably all modern western music genres, techno was invented by African-Americans! I hear minds being blown world-wide. Techno, seemingly pretty much the whitest music there is, looks largely designed for people who cant handle too many complications in their rhythm section. But travel back with me to Detroit in the pivotal year of 1980. Detroit had largely avoided the disco fad of the 70's but kept strong connections to Funk and Soul. Of course the big news in Detroit and everywhere else in 1980 was the coming computer revolution. And damn, a funk band leader don't need no degree from MIT to talk about "funk technology". A common view emerged that in the near future we would be typing on computers (possibly in space), wearing computers (possible in flouro colours) and listening to "computer music" (possibly in devices made by a computer company). Mix this funk-futurism with the emergent sounds of European synth-pop (Kraftwerk etc) and "computer music" of the future was only steps away. As Derrick May described, the sound of techno was "...like Detroit... a complete mistake, it's like George Clinton and Kraftwerk are stuck in an elevator with only a sequencer to keep them company."

Now, minimal techno has nothing at all to do with George Clinton, despite being his estranged progeny. It is a repetitive melee of tiny bits and beats with no tempo progression, melody or build whatsoever. It is fau "arty" background music for imperceptibly nodding one's head to in elevators. There is no funk, no feeling in minimal techno, a music so stripped down that it tires the ears and bores the soul. Were George alive today (and he is) he would surely declare that minimal is all foreplay and no sex... A Maladaptive Melody... The Defunctive Funk.