Collateral Damage

3/19/14 5:48 PM The Wire - Collateral Damage: Tony Herrington on the soul of electronic dance music
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Collateral Damage: Tony Herrington on the soul of
electronic dance music
March 2014
Reasserting the roots of Kraftwerks sound in African-
American R&B and jazz reveals how the soul of electronic
dance music is being throttled by the dead hand of the
culture industry. By Tony Herrington
In January, David Toop gave a talk at Londons Science
Museum in which he made the startling assertion that Kraftwerk
were Dusseldorfs answer to The Isley Brothers. Rather than a
frivolous provocation by a bored theorist, this represented a rare
return to a subject David once made his own, critiquing existing
orthodoxies on the historical give and take of African-American
and European popular musics, remaking connections that have
been ignored for various nefarious reasons (or just through
sheer ignorance) by critics and academics alike; or that have
been written out of history altogether for being too damn
inconvenient or messy.
Davids talk was partly prompted by a Facebook post by Kirk
Degiorgio, which bemoaned the fact that the African-American
contribution to Kraftwerks sound has been routinely sidelined by
three decades of rhetoric proclaiming them der Patenonkels of
techno and electro. As anyone familiar with the two interviews
with Kirk published in The Wire (way back in issues 160 and
214), this is a bone of contention he has been gnawing away at
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for some time.
As far as Kirk is concerned, the origins of techno and electro and
all the musics that flow from them lie in the synthesized
basslines, applied rhythmic technologies and Afrofuturist
concepts developed in the early 1970s pre-Autobahn,
pre-Radio Activity by such African-American visionaries as
Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Bernie Worrell and Stevie
Wonder, which Juan Atkins et al then took to the next level.
Previously he has come up with ingenious theories, rooted in a
class analyses of the catastrophic socio-economic conditions
that prevailed in the handful of African-American run US cities in
the 70s and 80s, to explain why early Detroit techno is infected
by white electro pop tropes seemingly picked up from over
exposure to Depeche Mode and Thomas Dolby. Now he looks to
be getting down to the serious business of recalibrating those
tropes respective source as African-American by proxy.
On Facebook, Kirk mentioned The Isleys in relation to Kraftwerk,
and in his talk, David took up the idea and ran with it, expanding
the argument to include the impact of progressive African-
American jazz on the Dusseldorf mensch-machines.
But Kraftwerk as the German Isleys makes sudden sense to me,
on both formal and musicological levels. Old song forms
retrofitted with new technologies: that sounds like what Kraftwerk
did and what African-American popular music had been doing
since the get go. Think of the transition from country blues in the
30s to electric blues in the 50s: the same songs only now
technologized. Then think about what Kraftwerk did two decades
later to Chuck Berrys automotorik R&B. The source code of
Autobahn is routinely located in the music of The Beach Boys.
Fine, but then analyse the source of The Beach Boys sound,
which according to Brian Wilson himself, was an attempt to
rewire 50s inner city African-American doo-wop and R&B for the
car and beach culture of 60s California.
The Isleys began their remarkable 60 year career as a doo-wop
group in 1954, a year before the official birth of rock n roll, then
moved through the eras of R&B, soul, funk, disco, electro,
house, new jack swing and on and on right up to the present
moment of Auto-tuned MOBO. As far as lengthy careers go, they
have around 15 years on their Deutsche doppelgangers. But
play Radio-Activity back to back with Tour De France
Soundtracks: as with The Isleys, and virtually every other
African-American R&B act that has stayed the course, the songs
remain the same; its the upgrades in the technology that catch
the imagination.
During his talk David cued up The Isleys Highways Of My Life
and Kraftwerks Tanzmusik and played them back

simultaneously to make a mischevious-serious point about
shared musical roots. In an even more inspired moment, he
dropped The Isleys 1969 Vacuum Cleaner (My love is like a
vacuum cleaner/It keeps pulling me in) as an example of the
kind of techno-eroticism that had long been a part of the imagery
of African-American R&B and would become such a key
Kraftwerk trope.
But the progressive jazz influences on Tone Float by the pre-
Kraftwerk Organisation and the first two Kraftwerk albums proper
are there for all to hear, in particular the Afrodelic sounds-in-
space odysseys developed in the mid-late 60s by The Art
Ensemble Of Chicago and Pharaoh Sanders, as well as the
monolithic one chord vamping plus freak out soloing
interspersed with passages of pure tone float that characterised
Miles Daviss late 60s groups, and which Miles adapted from
James Brown and Sly Stone. Like Miles, Kraftwerks genius
partly resided in their preternatural ability to instantly detect,
absorb and repurpose minute but significant shifts in the
fundamental stuff of African-American popular music, which is to
say rhythms and technology. And the tight-but-loose percussive
rhythms on those first two Kraftwerk records, which were then
quantized on Ralf Und Florian to establish the rhythmic grid
Kraftwerk would utilise for the rest of their career, sound exactly
like those laid down on Bitches Brew and Miles Davis At Fillmore
fractionally earlier by Jack DeJohnette, who we may have to now
retroactively acknowledge as one of the founding fathers of
motorik.
Was this one of the reasons those records were mysteriously
excluded from 2009s otherwise comprehensive repacking of the
Kraftwerk catalogue, a project overseen by the group itself?
Maybe white critics and fans with either cloth ears or clandestine
agendas or axes to grind arent the only ones looking to wipe the
slate clean of anything that will get in the way of maintaining
Kraftwerks cult status as the Mitteleuropa ground zero of
electronic dance music.
Such talk is guaranteed to get the trolls clambering out of their
holes. When Kirk Degiorgio dissed Throbbing Gristle and
Cabaret Voltaire in relation to the more complex rhythmatics of
house, techno and electro in the second of those two Wire
interviews, an irate reader laid into him on the next issues
Letters page: TG were utilising sequenced rhythms a full ten
years before Degiorgios heroes in dance music, spat Tim
Jones from Manchester, which was a particulaly sobering
example of the kind of aggressive reactionary historical
revisionism that has been brought to bear on the origins of
electronic dance music from the other side of the tracks, and
now I think about it, I cant believe we actually published it
without comment. Meanwhile, laissez-faire postmodernists will
dismiss it all as essentialist and atavistic.
But consider this: in 2014, post-techno electronic dance music is
increasingly being annexed to the whitest ever white worlds of
stadium rock, post-industrial culture and sound art, a deleterious
process that further isolates it from its origins in postwar African-
American culture. For one thing, you cant actually dance to
much of this stuff anymore. The act and art of dancing have
been rendered null and void by the musics devolution into
Skrillex-like festival bangers or liminal electronica. This is
significant because dancing, in case anyone needed reminding,
was once a key function of the music, a crucial component in a
dynamic and inclusive feedback loop. Taking it out of that loop
has implications for the musics social dynamic and by extension
its racial, sexual and economic dynamics too. Likewise,
electronic dance musics migration into museums and gallery
spaces (Kraftwerks most recent venues of choice) is detaching it
from the vernacular of pop culture itself. Instead, it is channeled
into petit bourgeois notions of what constitutes serious art
(ironically, or maybe not, David Toops talk took place in a
museum gallery in advance of a performance of Kraftwerks
music rescored for classical ensemble). This in turn prescribes
the terms and conditions in which audiences might react and
respond to it, devolving it into a highbrow, non-participatory
spectator sport; even worse, it predetermines the kinds of
individuals that might constitute those audiences, actively
excluding all Others.
In the midst of all this, and as critics and producers continue to
cite Kraftwerk and their industrial progeny as electronic dance
musics ne plus ultra, the need to state the uncomfortable
historical facts of the matter, to redraw a more complex lineage
that goes back to the revolutionary technological progressions
that swept through African-American music on the cusp of the
70s, feels more necessary, not to say liberating, than ever.
Contributors
Tony Herrington
Featured in Issue 362
April 2014
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This to not put too fine a point on is at best revisionist at worst
inherently racist nonsense. Racist nonsense because in the
manner of many a self-appointed white spokesmen for afro
Caribbean culture the author makes all the usual white colonial
mistakes based on the premise of there being some primordial
other inherent in blackness.
Rather than seeing all culture and music in particular as a
process of cross fertilisation between people of all races and
cultures be they black, white, brown etc etc. it tries to locate
some essentialist rhythmic purity within black culture no doubt
originating in those complex polyrthymns heard around the camp
fire.
In this context the article trips over itself in trying to argue that
the black man did it first and then the white man took it (why not
just say pinched it) and diminished its essence till oh la it ends
up in the gallery. Lets forget the traditions of dance stretching
back decades in Europe lets forget black and white musicians
working together such as Wonder and Tonto no instead lets
locate innovation in the black and derivation in the white.
The underlying and insidious colonialism of this misguided and
inherently racist otherness underpins not only this article but the
whole generation of veneration around roots music, the
willingness to forgive Rastafarianism its inherent sexism and
Babylonian bollocks not to mention bedrooms full of pasty white
boys copying rap moves and licks in some nightmare update of
the minstrel show.
Roger Bottomly
12|03|2014
i agreedisagree. "Jein" to say it in german. The thing is that
Kraftwerk did everything they could to NOT produce anything
blues related - because this white rock music trying to pretend it
is blues is a scam, a thievery. because rock was more and more
a spectacular lie that fed on blues (and i would easyly argue that
blues was already dead because of this). Then of course they
used rythms and technology. This is where i find it a little too
easy to consider that EVERYTHING that is rythm/tech has a
debt to R&B. When Can where rooting themselves clearly on
James Brown, Kraftwerk did not.
See the (very little) european rythmic tradition :
Varese ionisation has a debt to black music (or try to answer the
question balck music raise in the white soul), but certainly not to
R&B. It was actually an attempt to put rythm in white music
without trying to play "jazz" (my interpretation). And i think
Kraftwerk did something similar. they did not deny their black
influence but they tried to lay out the foundation of a GERMAN
rythm music that is totally rooted in postwar germany, a german
music that would have no relation what so ever with german
history (romanticism and all what lead to nazism). the point was
not being white or black but being german in a time where
people were ashamed to be. This "german-non-traditional-non-
folk" music had to be technological. economic miracle,
ruhrgebiet all that stuff... ANd maybe some afro-miles-davies-
Motown-Stax roots are there, why not, but that was NOT what
they wanted to achieve. and i find it rather a little over the top
thoerician academic like to go from vaccum cleaner to the
techno-eros of Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk as a techno-eros and it is
very very different. it is quite humoristic, based on dullness,
boring landscape, beautifull ennui/fatigue... i do not think they
ever tried neither to be "purely white" (or to hide anything in their
rerelease, common!). nonsense. they were trying to save the
german soul by recreating it from scratch (and yes "from scratch"
does NOT exist, there of course comes influences they had).
Neubauten did the same (and they were still big fans of Lee
Perry).
Guillaume 12|03|2014
Articles like this pretty much put a point on why I've let my
subscription to Wire lapse. This article is so tortured and
grasping it reads like something written by a second-year who
had never thought about racial issues in music writing for their
student newspaper. It also displays the same level of apparent
unfamiliarity with the scene.
Just to pick one piece.
"For one thing, you cant actually dance to much of this stuff
anymore. The act and art of dancing have been rendered null
and void by the musics devolution into Skrillex-like festival
bangers or liminal electronica."
Nobody who has any exposure to today's dance music scene
could possibly write this. We just had (to live through) a deep-
house revival.
This particular line reads like 'I wish dance music was the same
as when I was 20' or 'I have no idea what I'm talking about, but
this Skrillex guy seems to be getting a lot of press - that must be
what's going on now'.
As for the larger questions of race in modern dance music, it's
pretty weird that we have a whole article supposedly about that
which doesn't mention the rise of Footwork or Trap in recent
times.
Or the fact that Miles was getting deep into Stockhausen in the
late 60s/early 70s.
Dan G 12|03|2014
"Rather than seeing all culture and music in particular as a
process of cross fertilisation between people of all races and
cultures be they black, white, brown etc etc. it tries to locate
some essentialist rhythmic purity within black culture no doubt
originating in those complex polyrthymns heard around the camp
fire."
actually Roger, it is "I" who have long accepted this cross-
fertilisation and am simply frustrated when I come across
biographies/articles that completely omit the importance of
lesser-known but equally important influences from Black
American music.
it's not a 'purist' crusade as you have misinterpreted - more a
simple redressing the balance.
Kirk
12|03|2014
But it IS essentialist, isn't it? The boundaries between genres
can be drawn wherever anyone who wants to draw one chooses.
So when and where was techno born? Was it with the Belleville
Three? Or was it with the ideas they owed to Kraftwerk, the City
of Detroit, Herbie Hancock? Was it with the early synthesists and
computer musicians? And so on.
As for all dance music now either being stadium rock and
narcoleptic house, give me a break.
James Greenan 13|03|2014
"Racist nonsense because in the manner of many a self-
appointed white spokesmen for afro Caribbean culture..."
if you're gonna bitch about racism, at least get your facts right--
the isleys aren't from the caribbean, they are from NEW
JERSEY. "african-american" refers to people with african
heritage born in the UNITED STATES, not the caribbean. most
african-americans have roots in the south of the usa, not the
caribbean--we have a different history that is quite well
documented (or you could just watch "roots.")
--------
"We just had (to live through) a deep-house revival."
sure, but is that what's getting booked for these massive
festivals? i think your "we" = the underground--who weren't going
to the edm-fest anyway.
--------
"actually Roger, it is "I" who have long accepted this cross-
fertilisation and am simply frustrated when I come across
biographies/articles that completely omit the importance of
lesser-known but equally important influences from Black
American music."
to further bolster kirk's point, african-american music is NOT
generally treated equally to its euro-american cousin. look at the
"music" section in any major newspaper--euro-based music is
"music" whereas afro-based music is often "pop music" or some
other delineation--does that seem equal to you?
T-Bird 14|03|2014
Time to weigh in with some responses.
First, to be called a racist by the likes of Roger Bottomly is
indeed a badge of honour I will wear with pride. He probably
thinks his comments are progressive, but they reveal him to be
the kind of white man (I'm assuming he is white just as he
assumes that I am) who is terrified by the implications of what he
hears in black music, because it confronts him with a reality he
dare not face. This is implicit in all his comments then made
explicit in his bizarre invocation of European dance music (what,
like the waltz and the paso doble?), his dismissal of roots
reggae's political agenda as sexist and Babylonian bollocks, and
finally in the nightmare vision of white supremacists everywhere
of white youth being infected by black culture.
Guillaume's comments actually support my points rather than
contradict them. The problem is that Kraftwerk were retroactively
configured as the fount for the subsequent iterations of the black
music they took from in order to forge a music that owned
nothing to their parents' generation (a generation which damned
African-American culture as degenerate), and then became so
wrapped up in their own myth that they started perpetuating this
distorted notion themselves. Kraftwerk may have been
attempting to realise a music fit for the postwar industrial
landscapes of the Ruhr valley, and in this they initially
acknowledged their debt to the way The Stooges attempted on
Funhouse to do the same thing for the postwar industrial
landscapes of the American Midwest. But as Iggy Pop has
clearly stated, the models for Funhouse were John Coltrane and
James Brown. We also need to be wary of this other cliche, that
German rock of the 60s and 70s was an attempt to break with
blues-derived forms. The blues is not just about a particular
chord sequence, it is, as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal and others
have made clear, a philosophical condition that lies at the root of
all African-American popular music, from R&B to hiphop, from
James Brown to John Coltrane.
Finally, I'm not talking about ALL dance music, obviously, but
post-techno electronic dance music, the stuff that is routinely
cited as the progeny of Kraftwerk - so not all the current house
and garage derivatives which are descended from disco, and not
all the jungle/grime/dubstep derivatives (aka the Hardcore
Continuum if yr a follower of Simon Reynolds) which are
descended from UK breakbeat culture which was a synthesis of
US rap and Jamaican sound system culture. Analyse the
rhythms in all these musics and the differences are clear.
Rhythm is the foundation of all African-American music (just as it
was the foundation of the radical break 20th century composition
made with the classical canon back in the day - just ask
Stravinsky and Debussy, or Aaron Copland - and this rhythmic
break was fascilitated in no small part by the example of jazz).
That's not an essentialist statement but one based in
musicological fact (though I'm happy to be called an essentialist
when what holds all these assumptions in place is a racist
system that is, as all racist systems are, deeply essentialist itself.
Fight fire with fire and by any means necessary).
The rhythms of techno and electro and their derivatives are
rooted in R&B and funk. They are R&B and funk technolgized.
More than that, these musics marked the most profound attempt
to stage a philosophical discussion on the nature of black US
identity after the end of the world (cf Sun Ra and Public Enemy)
via pop culture since P-funk, which in turn was the most radical
since the cosmic jazz of the 60s. So techno and electro in their
own time were the blackest of black musics, including hiphop.
And it is this music which Kraftwerk have been so lazily and
retroactively cited as the forefathers of, and which now is being
cut off from its true origins and meaning and milieu by the likes
of EDM and liminal electronica. When Afrika Bambaataa had his
famous epiphany listening to "Trans-Europe Express", the one
that led to "Planet Rock", he wasn't hearing anything he didn't
already know, he was, to paraphrase Sun Ra, hearing it
refracted through a dream that black music had dreamt long ago.
If you can get to that then you might just be getting on the right
track to seeing and hearing things as the really are.
Tony Herrington 15|03|2014
David Toop's most inspired contribution to rock criticism was his
'two tabs and a synthesiser' review of a Model 500 track back in
'87.
From there, it was an easy step to Fingers Inc and everything
that followed - for which I'll be eternally grateful.
Steve E. 15|03|2014
Derrick May was wrong! Techno is the sound of George Clinton
in an elevator on his own! Seriously though, why is there no
mention of latin american music and the huge influence that had
on electro and techno? Why do you avoid discussing the records
that Kraftwerk made that are most relevant to this; Trans Europe
Express, the Robots, the Computer World LP? At times it seems
like you are making out that Kraftwerk are an r'n'b/funk band and
their music was just just a logical iteration in its development, but
surely you don't really think that. I'd agree that the influence of
African American music on them is rarely discussed, but why not
limit your argument to that and give some more convincing
examples rather than red herrings like the jazz influence of their
earlier albums or the beach boys?
Chalmero 17|03|2014
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Sorry but there really is no scuh thing as black music -
19|03|2014
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3/19/14 5:48 PM The Wire - Collateral Damage: Tony Herrington on the soul of electronic dance music

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