Famous Music Scenes and their Origins

Art is a reflection, not a creation.
Art absorbs all the tools and ideas around it, reconfigures them to its liking, and projects out a statement about the culture in which they came.
The best artists make statements that resonate the longest. In a virtuosic artists hands, these statements can be beautiful, sad, terrifying, aspirational; maybe all at once. However art is a reflection, not a creation. And the best artists come from environments where the tools and ideas are the most dynamic.
In the spirit of this, I will now take you on a journey through some of the most epic music scenes of my home country (Murica):

Congo Square: 1800–1885
This scene takes place in New Orleans, Louisiana. Whether you recite Eminem lyrics, play air guitar in your bathroom, have a good cry to a sultry blues, or drunkenly fist-pump to house music at Barasti Beach, you have this music scene and this music scene alone to thank. The reason is: This is the birthplace of all American music.
Congo Square is an area next to the French Quarter in New Orleans (now fittingly called Louis Armstrong Park.) In the times of French Occupation, African slaves would gather in the Square on their Sunday off for epic jam sessions. Congo Square had a few important factors as to why it was so influential:
1) Slaves were allowed to keep their instruments in New Orleans. Because of past slave uprisings in the states, slave masters had figured out that the Africans were able to communicate with each other via their drums, and that they could use these drums to communicate acts of aggression. In response to this, drums and other African instruments were banned all over the south, except, importantly, in Congo Square, Louisiana.
2) 19th Century New Orleans was a true melting pot. Because New Orleans was hotly contested between the French, Spanish, and ultimately the Americans (Remember the Louisiana Purchase) all three of these cultures had a strong foothold in ‘Nawlins society. Additionally, civil unrest in the Caribbean was bringing in droves of islander refugees at the time, both black and white. Add an influx of Irish refugees into the mix (their potatoes ran out) and you, my friends, have a very culturally diverse place indeed.
3) 19th century New Orleans was an extremely tolerant society. Perhaps because there were so many different cultures it would be exhausting to try to hate them all. Instead, these people were open to adapting elements of different cultures into their own.
And adapt they did. French and Spanish settlers would come down to watch these early Congo Square jam sessions, and would be mystified by what they saw: Hundreds of Africans, moving counterclockwise, chanting in harmony and beating out intricate rhythms on their drums.
However, what is most interesting about this scene is how the Africans, with their jam sessions in such a fertile and progressive environment, would reflect the culture that was surrounding them. Slowly the Africans of Congo Square would absorb French operatic harmony, Spanish and Irish instruments, Anglo-Saxon church songs, synthesize them into the African diaspora of rhythmic repetition and collective improvisation, and what came out ……. well my friends …… that is the stuff of legend. (whoa hooo whoooaaaa) ((in Axl Rose’s voice))
This was American music’s first great debut. The musical genres that would come from this (jazz, blues, rock, funk, disco, samba, reggae, house, hip hop, etc, etc) would all carry that old Congo Square tradition where four factors were of the utmost importance:
1) Freedom to experiment with the tools of music-making available to you.
2) The collective sound is greater than the individual sound.
3) A melting pot of influences
4) Music revolving around lifestyle as opposed to “performance.”
Annnnnnnd with that…. music scene number 2:

Dockery Plantation 1900–1930
One humid riverboat ride north from New Orleans and you arrive at the second great influential music scene of America, which was to be found at Dockery Plantation, Mississippi. Owned by Will Dockery; graduate of the University of Mississippi, who originally bought the land for its timber until he realized its farming potential. This would prove to be fertile soil indeed.
Legend has it that Charlie Patton moved to Dockery Farms with his family in 1900 where he met a man named Eddie “Son” House. These down home boyz started a music scene that would later capture the interests of some figures named Robert Johnson and Howling’ Wolf (he was a human.) They developed a melancholy, isolated, and expressive form of music: just a man and his guitar. They sang about love lost, a hard day’s work, the trials and tribulations of people that were pushed to the margins. In a strange ironic twist, these songs about deep isolation and longing would resonate with people all over the world. People who felt comforted that someone else could understand their sadness, and in turn, these people wouldn’t feel so alone. It was a form of catharsis the world had not fallen in love with since the Greek Tragedies.
Later, white people would name this style of music the “Blues.”

Greenwich Village 1950- 1970
Greenwich Village is a neighborhood on the West Side of Lower Manhattan, New York city. From the early 1900s onward, Greenwich Village was known as the area of town where the smelly artists and writers hung out. As a result it became a melting pot of different cultures and was very accepting of all comers (sound familiar?) The Hotel Albert on 11th Street became a gathering place for all the artists in town (sound familiar??), and is generally credited with inventing the “Bohemian” culture. By the mid 1950s the Bohemian culture was in the midst of an artistic Renaissance, and gave us the most fruitful folk music scene in American History. Clubs like the Bitter End, The Gaslight Cafe, and Cafe Au Go Go became workshops for some of the most iconic folk musicians, and the ground zero for music that would shape an entire nation’s thinking. That’s right: I’m talking Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Jonie Mitchell, James Taylor, Jimi Hendrix. This was a breeding ground for fierce artistic expression, and a push-back against a society that wasn’t listening. (counter-culture) (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻)
And as every good musician knows: what do you do when someone isn’t listening? You turn the amplifier up!
That leads me to the next music scene…..

South Bronx 1978–1985
During the late 70’s and into the 80’s, the dissolution of the Black Panthers, the introduction of crack cocaine into urban communities, and Reagan’s Trickle Down Economics (in summary: Fuck poor people) left urban life for many African-Americans destitute and violent. With parents addicted to drugs, there was neither the money nor the inclination to buy musical instruments or give their kids music lessons. (Remember my earlier story about slave owners taking the African slave’s drums away?)((Sound Familiar???))
However, the show must go on, and because these young kids on the streets of South Bronx couldn’t afford or play instruments, they decided to take their parent’s records and put their own form of self-expression over top. And what better (or least expensive) instrument than the human voice?
DJs (Disc Jockeys) in South Bronx would loop the portions of their parent’s funk songs when all the instruments dropped out, and there were only drums left (take that society!) These became known as “breaks,” which essentially were 8 bar loops of some funky drum beat. There were street parties thrown where the DJ would play funky beats all night, and there were hype men who would yell stuff on the mic to keep the energy in the crowd high (Yes Yes Ya’ll, And It Don’t Stop, etc)
Eventually the hype men got bored of yelling non-sequiturs and began to make an art form of rhythmic words over the drum breaks. This became known as “rapping” and would soon over-shadow the DJing to become the popular form of art that we know and love today. (The DJs would later get their revenge: google “Trap”)
The beginnings of these block parties are credited to the Ghetto Brothers, a group of Puerto Ricans, (Caribbean influence)((Sound familiar????)) but it would be DJs like Kool Hurc and MCs like Afrikaa Bambataa who would elevate this artform from a local Bronx dance party to a world-wide obsession.
As you can see, we are still following the Golden Rules of Congo Square, namely rule #1: Freedom to experiment with the tools of music-making available to you.
And this leads me to my next music scene………………

South Side Chicago 1985–1990
You may associate House Music with vodka-wielding Europeans in very restrictive clothing (I know I do) but the origins of House actually started in a different time and place altogether. Jesse Saunders was a DJ and record label owner out of Chicago who wanted to one-up every other DJ in town with his closing set. He had the bright idea to loop a disco tune named “Space Invaders” and add his own instruments to the mix. He did this by implementing his brand-spanking-new Roland TR-808 drum machine as well as the Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer to add layers of electronic sounds over the existing track. What may have started as an ego trip or just an extra-epic encore inadvertently spawned a whole new genre of music. Many other Chicago DJs caught on and started using these techniques on their own DJ sets.
These DJs would get together at a club called The Warehouse on the South Side of Chicago to try and outdo each other for the hearts of the dance floor. Frankie Knuckles was the resident DJ of The Warehouse, and therefore spent the most time absorbing techniques from other guest DJs around town. Over the course of his residency at The Warehouse, he would get more and more experimental with mixing techniques and sound design on his sets, which gave rise to the multi-textured, high energy sound that decorates expensive clubs world-wide to this day.
The Warehouse was shortened to “House” and the party lives on……..

Seattle 1985–1995
“Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure shit!” These were the words of one Mark Arm, vocalist for Seattle-based band Green River. He wrote these words in a letter to Seattle-based newspaper Desperate Times describing his own band’s music. Thus led a wave of angry, top-heavy music that would accurately depict the sentiment of angsty teenagers for years after. Starting as an ironic social response to the calcified corporate Muzak of MTV, like all music scenes, the best musicians took it and turned it into an art form of its own. Heavyweights like Sound Garden (sound familiar?????)((lol just kidding)) Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Nirvana represented a dirty shoe stepping on MTV’s pristine white couch. Although called “Grunge” for the dirty sound their guitars were producing, this was actually meant to be a return to purity for the musicians involved. The bands of the grunge era skipped the Grammy’s, gave their label’s advances back, didn’t show up for tour if they didn’t feel like it, (didn’t wash their clothes), and generally just did not give a fuck about you or your lame corporate greed existence.
As you can see, every defining music scene in American history represents a cultural pendulum that swings opposite. It is the need for self-expression amongst a homogeneous culture that drives each and every innovation.

Now at this point you may ask yourself: “Colin, why are you writing this, and what the hell does it have to do with me?” Well my narcissistic friend, I’ll tell you why…..
What of the four golden rules from Congo Square do we have in Dubai at the current moment? Do we have a melting pot of cultures? A wide array of music-making tools? A need for self-expression and to be a part of a bigger whole?
I think we are in the midst of a fertile music scene right here and right now. The community is here, now we must come together and push ourselves to greatness. What we need is to etch out a community here in Dubai where the bar is constantly high, and the supporters are constantly excited about what we are creating. We have too unique a situation here to let our art comfortably settle into mediocrity. We can do this good musicians of Dubai, and we must.
Like the great Thelonious Monk once said: “The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.” I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, but I like it.

