EDM — What is it? Why is it hated?
I’m an European millenial who grew up in the electronic/dance music age. When I listened to the radio, most of the pop music was produced electronically. From 80’s synthpop, 90’s eurodance to 00’s electro house, my impression was that electronic/dance music was the dominant music genre in the world. Not that I was oblivious to other genres, but they didn’t seem as big as electronic/dance music.
Imagine my shock when most Americans seemed to have missed this electronic/dance music train. You had rock music — predominantly for white high school boys looking for groupies — and you had R&B and hip hop — that was what the urban poor minorities listened to. In the American view, electronic/dance music was for nerds with poor sense of taste. So when electronic/dance music did gain popularity in America in the beginning of the 2010's, the Americans seized it and gave it a new label: EDM.
Back then, I didn’t care much about labels. Faithless, The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk or Tiësto, it all sounded the same. Sure, unconsciously I knew they were different styles, but that didn’t matter. When you’re young, details don’t matter, the world was divided in music that sounded good and music that sounded thrash. I didn’t particularly like non-electronic music, so my classification system was pretty black-and-white.
I was wrong. Labels do matter. Labels define things. Labels are meant to separate what is from what isn’t. So what is EDM?
To answer this question, you need to know the origin of the name. Luckily, there are people who have extensively wrote on it (and with more authority than I could).
I’m just going to recap it short & simple. Electronic/dance music started at the end of the 70’s with experimentation by German bands like Kraftwerk. Simultaneously, there were pioneering producers who collaborated with disco artists. ‘I Feel Love’ of Donna Summers, a production of Giorgio Moroder, was very influential for electronic/dance music.
In the 80’s, this evolved into synthpop (a more electronic version of disco). If you think about 80’s classics like Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)’ or Depeche Mode’s ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’. This was the type of electronic/dance music that was very popular in Europe.
However, in the Warehouse club of Chicago, a new type of electronic music was born: house. The same thing happened in Detroit (Detroit techno) and New York (Garage house). This Chicago house evolved later into acid house. In the 90’s, this acid house and techno music found its way to Europe, where people went to illegal rave parties to dance all night to thumping beats.
And this is where The Big Divide happened. In Europe, electronic/dance music became rooted as the dominant youth music genre. In America, Chicago house and Detroit techno met their grave. Gangsta rap and boysband rock was what young Americans listened to.
So when electronic/dance music shrugged off its nerdy image, America was flooded with European-based DJ’s and some marketing boys and girls gave it a new name: EDM.
The Big Divide is what makes EDM — which simply stands for electronic dance music — a source of conflict between the American and the European viewpoint of the same music.
Most Americans don’t really see the issue with EDM: the thing needs a collective name to separate it from other music genres and EDM is pretty straight forward. EDM is the collective name for all that is predominantly electronically produced music played at dancings and clubs. EDM becomes the umbrella term for all its genres: house, trance, techno, drum ‘n bass, hardcore, hardstyle, dubstep, breaks etc.
Despite its American origins, electronic/dance music is claimed by Europe. Europeans are offended by these clueless (who in the recent past annoyingly called everything remotely electronic techno) Americans who see EDM as a commercial cash-cow. Most Europeans reject the term EDM as such, they find it a form of American imperialism of what is “their” music. EDM becomes the scapegoat for everything that goes “wrong”with electronic/dance music today.
The knee-jerk reaction of a lot of Europeans is strange for the neutral observer. Isn’t it a good thing that there is a collective name for what is clearly a collective with a shared history?
But, will many note, we don’t need EDM as an umbrella term. In Europe we already have a perfectly valid alternative. And then it comes: depending on the person, it is either dance or electronic music. Some would even say that both do not mean the same thing.
In the AllMusic database, electronic music or electronica is referred to electronically-produced music which is more for at-home listening (such as techno), while dance is referred to as electronically produced music who is more for at clubs and festivals (such as house). That’s why I used both names so far, because there is no consensus on what is what.
At best, this distinction is artificial. In both techno and house, there are sub-genres, styles and even individual songs who are for listening or for dancing. At worse, it is harmful: the view that techno is for nerds sitting at home while house is for the popular, social people having fun at clubs, is stereotypical and a disservice for both genres.
Electronic music itself is a debatable term. Armada Music places the start of EDM at Jamaican dub and also includes the acoustic-produced disco as EDM genres. In a similar fashion you could argue for the inclusion of hiphop and R&B, as both are also electronically-produced. In fact, hiphop and EDM have a common ancestor: electro. It so happens that some artists start focusing more to the electronic sounds, while others to rapping lyrics.
These days, almost everything is electronically produced. Is electronic music not a better umbrella for all electronically-produced music, and keep EDM to refer to those electronic music that originated from dancings (hence the dance in the name)?
Vice ran an article two years back with has the headline: “Stop Confusing EDM With All Electronic Music, Already. You’re embarrassing yourself.” Such articles baffle me, wondering what curious species these commentators belong to. People who read such articles, can only come to one conclusion: EDM must be an entirely different genre of electronic music.
So what is EDM if not an umbrella? This is what Vice gives as a definition:
“EDM, in the musical grouping sense, came to designate a variant dance music characterized by big drops and high production value, typically played out in huge arenas; it was popularized by artists such as Skrillex, deadmau5, Sebastian Ingrosso, and Axwell.”
The problem is: Skrillex and Ingrosso are as different as DJ’s as it can be. Skrillex is mainly a dubstep (I’m not going into the specific details of all the different styles, I’m well aware the brostep/drumstep/moombahcore of Skrillex is a different kind of dubstep than Benga & Coki) DJ-producer while Axwell & Ingrosso are progressive (big room) house DJ-producers. The only commonality is that they both play at big festivals.
In fact, what is referred to as EDM can more accurately be described as big room, electro house, brostep, trap, tropical house etc. EDM becomes a meaningless term then, used by sneering so called “music experts” to demean any and all progress in electronic music of the last decade.
Some rescue EDM to denote all commercially-produced electronic/dance music. But if that is true, what is dance-pop then if not pop music with EDM influences? The notion that EDM is somehow a separate genre alongside house and techno, is untenable.
What is fundamental to understand is that these authors form a club of music purists and genre police. For years, barriers have been constructed between the different kinds of music and between the different genres of electronic music. Genres like techno, house and trance have fragmented into so many subgenres, styles, sub-styles and sub-sub-styles that nobody could begin to comprehend.
Too many Europeans are stuck at their own islands, not realising that the different genres had more in common than they differ. There’s only reason why EDM as a name originated: because despite all the different styles and genres, they all share a common denominator: the extensive use of electronic instruments, DJ’ing and producing as means of music creation & performance and the club/festival culture. The thing needs a name and today that is EDM. It is sad it were the Americans who realised this fundamental fact.
Anyway, this fragmentation and isolation lead to a small but vocal group of hard-line genre policemen who carefully guarded the gates between these genres and styles and shout-down line-crossing DJ-producers. The more underground the genre, the more fierce the genre police is. Their job is simple: keep the music “pure”. Belonging to a sub-style is akin to a tribe, clan or gang. As a DJ, you were expected to become member of one tribe and not play anything else.
It is also a generation conflict. Electronic/dance music always had a young image. This has changed. The ravers of the 90’s are today in their late forties with a mid-life crisis. However, the music has changed so much over the years. You get the classic nostalgic whining: “in my day, you didn’t have auto-mix, you needed to have talent to DJ”, “in my day, it was real music not noise”, etc. Often, age and genre policing are connected.
There are older DJ’s who do not participate. David Guetta is the ghost producer behind Black Eyed Peas monster hit I Gotta Feeling. But Guetta was always a commercial-oriented DJ and also big enough to not be affected by the haters. A lot smaller DJ’s with a dedicated fan base do not have the luxury to rebel.
Then the 2010’s happened and a new generation of DJ’s, totally ignorant or indifferent to these musical tribes and persuaded by American dollars, put the middle-finger to the genre police and start experimenting with other genres. They weren’t scared to collaborate with hip hoppers or pop artists. And before everyone knew it, a new subgenre emerged: trap.
Trap was unthinkable in the Europe of the 00’s. Which we arrive at the central point: not commercialisation will cause the death of EDM but the petty genre police who kept music from innovating. All this sudden, DJ’s get to know other genres and incorporate elements from different genres so new subgenres emerge. Thanks to the fragmentation, the number of fusion genres are practically limitless.
My message to the genre police cannot be better said than the lyrics from Armin van Buuren’s psy-house (?) hit ‘Turn It Up’:
One, two, we’re coming for you, we don’t give a whoop gonna break some rules…