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Why has Europe traditionally been a stronghold for electronic music?

Why has Europe traditionally been a stronghold for electronic music?

As far as I know, there aren't many Americans, and Deadmau5 is one of the few Canadians.

North America was never ever friendly to disco music. It's was a rock dominated music culture for some time. There's a backlash against sampling, and midi too. Things are looking different with America totally eating up electro and dubstep, but we have to wait and see if it's just a trend or here to stay.

Yeah, I've read about that.

For some reason it continued to be popular with blacks, latinos and gay people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_house
I don't have a point, just want it to post some thing.

troll thread..

By 2020 I think it will be huge in America.

I think so too.

I bring up the minority angle because I'm curious. Was it because it was a way to have their own music?

I happen to be gay myself, and a lot us of do like this stuff (although we don't admit it) for some reason. Are we wired to dance or something?

And why most of the greatest classical composers of all time were born in Europe?

To the second question, most of the great classical compositions people think of were created while Europe was full of superpowers and America hadn't been settled yet. There was still plenty of music being written in Africa and Asia, but the wide influence of Western music means that older, Western composers have kind of overshadowed them.

quote:

Originally posted by arskinetica I think so too. I bring up the minority angle because I'm curious. Was it because it was a way to have their own music? I happen to be gay myself, and a lot us of do like this stuff (although we don't admit it) for some reason. Are we wired to dance or something?

have you ever been to europe?

its just as big there as it is here..

and theres just as much guys this side of the pond making this music..as over there..

sure they happen to have a lot more success due to more festivals..and a lot more indepedant records being thrown on the radio in europe compared to the states where only the big labels control what gets played..

besides that theres no difference...

quote:

Originally posted by Scrittah To the second question, most of the great classical compositions people think of were created while Europe was full of superpowers and America hadn't been settled yet. There was still plenty of music being written in Africa and Asia, but the wide influence of Western music means that older, Western composers have kind of overshadowed them.

Not sure

in the 18th century America was just a bunch of europeans and the local natives, people who immigrated to America rarely were musicians, in the 15th and 16th century when America became established traveling by boat meant a year travelling plus a huge risk of death, only people who had loads of things to win and little to lose went there.

Now things have changed drastically and America is not the bandwagon of the world, the opposite indeed. But it's true there are few gifted artists for such a huge population compared to Europe, you have a lot of talent in Holland which is a pretty small country so i think social culture plays a role here.

quote:

Originally posted by -FSP- North America was never ever friendly to disco music. It's was a rock dominated music culture for some time. There's a backlash against sampling, and midi too. Things are looking different with America totally eating up electro and dubstep, but we have to wait and see if it's just a trend or here to stay.

NA, mostly the USA, had a problem with disco. The club culture that came along with it was filled with drugs and sex (and homosexuality, which was still considered "really bad" back then), many artists of the time (like Rod Stewart and Blondie) basically sold out and made disco (which was different from their normal musical format), and like stated, it was a rock dominated culture. So when the 80s hit, disco was bad...very, very bad.

But in Europe, disco continued to evolve and morph and eventually became Italo Disco. Sure, house and techno were invented in the USA, but was very underground and was more popular outside of the USA than it was inside.

NA also seems to have electronic music "waves", where electronic music is considered "acceptable", albeit said electronic music is very accessible and poppy. New Wave and Synthpop of the 80s is a good example of this, though I like to think it was less "electronic music" and more "pop with electronic music elements". Then it was "techno", which wasn't really techno at all. Then "electronica", which was a marketing phrase developed because the majority of people are too ignorant (and don't care enough not to be) about electronic music genres and sub-genres. Now we have the dubstep and electro craze, but in both cases, they're very watered down versions of each respective genres offerings.

NA will never be a place that full accepts electronic music, and it will be very rare that we will ever see a #1 on the pop charts that is fully electronic music, but something from David Guetta.

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Originally posted by djshire NA will never be a place that full accepts electronic music, and it will be very rare that we will ever see a #1 on the pop charts that is fully electronic music, but something from David Guetta.

what do you mean by 'fully electronic'?

Actualy we used to discuss this very thing back in the 90's. It always struck us that MTV was all rock focused and to be frank we just didn't get why dance did'nt seem popular.

However, one area that did seem very futuristic and cool was the early hip hop scene, typified by people like Africa Bambata. IMO modern pop was born out of US hip hop electronica.

There will be varied reasons as to why rock dominated but my laymans hunch is that the US as a new and young country sought it's own identity signposts and that once embeded these were powerful symbols of a shared identity as so particularly solid and immovable, whereas I suppose Europeans were more blase about the past, at a time when all things new held more appeal, almost a reaction against thousands of years of cultural symbolism.

To us growing up Americans were MUCH cooler people, and made these unbelievably cool films and embraced sci fi and the space race, so in this regard we looked to them as the future. In particular the cities were something straight out of a boys futuristic comic. Even silly things like us noticing microwave ovens in thier kitchens was for us another world (in the 80's I mean). Even the sybolism in older films such as Halloween and Charlie Brown for us seemed incredibly modern.

However, when it came to music to me and mates it was mostly dire and spoke to us back then of an older time we just could not relate to.

Now though I see America being on equal par in electronica.

americans have always placed emphasis on lyrics and performances. Pop groups that did a tour in the USA had to have a band while a back track was fine for europe. Anything without lyrics will never be palatable in the USA which is most dance music.

Have to disagree with the America on par, there has yet to really be any scenes to break out of America, just a few artists. Not including the Chicago house thing and the detroit techno thing which was always rather underground and never really liked in america.

Germany for me has always been the centre of most things dance followed by france. I won't deny UK's influence but I always found everything from there just a little behind and they tended to stick with trends that most other places had moved on.

to me all the hype genres comes from UK. they take everything by storm and dissapear just as fast. no integrity but loads of creativity. germany is more "true" but less interesting. france i dont know shit about really. netherland is lame, always been spoiled and with no taste. belgium lol not going there. then theres east europe with their psytrance. and norway with the lame electronica. sweden with its fine techno. spain, italy, greece are all fucked up. basically a combination of german, sweden and UK techno is the only thing working. and drum and bass. EDM is no mystery anymore, the magic is gone.

america? i know house came from detroit but thats about it, westbam took it further. canada supposly have some IDM shit. i hate that shit.

rest of the world sucks, except Japan. Interesting stuff is going on there from time to time. Oh and maybe Australian TechHouse.

Do you mean instrumental?

Do people even use live instruments unless they have to any more?

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Originally posted by hasbone what do you mean by 'fully electronic'?

I'll explain this tomorrow when I'm not so tired.

This is partial but in Europe you can find the best Techno in Germany the best trance in the netherlands and surroundings (gonna include Belgium cause of Airwave) and there is a good Swiss/Italian connection in the matter of prog.house.

Psychedelic full on is from Israel which is not Europe still, France never was my cup of tea, they are so into electro and techtonik and i hate that. UK and Polland is a classic place for musicians, a lot of great producers of several music styles came from here.

Sweden is land of nowhere for me, all the northern europe countries are a lot into hardstyle, gabber ,hardcore etc... but excluding the poor Airbase their major representatives are SHM and Avicii , disgusting representatives :S

As for spain... all the trance names that had some impact on the global scene are now playing commercial house thoroughly across spain, the local house producers aren't impressive either but i have to recognize there is a good and healthy house scene. Recent trance scene is non existant, i could be considered one of the representatives of this movement so just think how sad is this.

Alright, I'm awake now.

"Fully Electronic" can also be said as "closest to the genre/sub-genre the song is from". Now what does that mean? Simple: How close to pop music is the song. We could get into a nice, long debate on the difference between the modern, "popular" Uplifting Trance vs the Classic Trance of about 20 years ago, but that's an entirely different discussion.

Best kind of recent example: David Guetta feat. Kelly Roland "When Love Takes Over". Is that house? In the loosest of sense, yes. But to me, it sounds like pop music. Alice Deejays "Better Off Alone" became popular during the Epic Trance explosion in the late 90s/early 2Ks, and while that is considered very cheesy, it is more "electronic" than "When Love Takes Over". Its how a song is structured, how the synths and bass and drums sound, that's what makes a song "more electronic" to me. A song that was really electronic but still got plenty of radio play: Robert Miles "Children". That's a song that, looking back, would not be something that I thought would get radio air play, especially in the states...but I remember hearing it on pop radio when I was younger.

Now before you ask, vocals do not have to be absent from a track to make it "more electronic", but the vocals have to work for the song, and again, how the songs instrumentation sound and the songs structure are put together in the song are what makes it "more electronic".

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