Monday, February 2, 2009

Detroit as a landscape for musical innovation

I've been thinking lately about the landscape of the city of Detroit being the backdrop for intense musical innovation and creativity. I’m thinking of a blog post of mine from last spring. Many people involved in electronic music from outside of Detroit describe the landscape of Detroit being one of desolation, abandonment, emptiness and emphasizing the profound suffering and ugliness that they see as evident within the city's borders. For many, this image is a backdrop for the innovation of Detroit electronic music. Now this is sometimes an idea that Detroit musicians espouse, but not to such a severe degree. There admittedly are many problems with life in Detroit; there is a great deal of poverty, the state of the public school system is dismal, and there are pockets of the landscape that are abandoned, destroyed, or simply not being used for their original intended civic purposes. However, like I wrote in that blog post last spring, this city is thriving. Amidst all the poverty and crime and abandonment, there is a profound degree of community development and civic mindedness that many non-Detroiters assume does not exist. Detroit is the second most populous city in the Midwest after Chicago. Detroit proper with a population just under 1 million is larger than Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and other Midwestern cities that don’t get nearly as bad a rap as Detroit does. Here is some of the data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States

There is this fantasy about Detroit techno music – people imagine it as being a product of a desolate city that is really only imaginable in science fiction. The levels of danger, desolation, desperation, crime, and abandonment that were and are imagined by techno fans who are not from Detroit are so extreme that they really cannot possibly exist in an actual city. Yes, the desolation and crime that have plagued the city and Detroit’s history are real. Many people I have interviewed have described the city as hard, but they also realize and vocalize the many positive things about life in this city. With a population of 1 million, plenty of landscape exists that is beautiful and not abandoned, remaining middle and upper class neighborhoods, mainly in the North West region of Detroit that are maintained and populated, full and vibrant working class neighborhoods as well…all these things provide ample evidence that this city is thriving and quite busy and active in countless positive ways.

So there is a great deal of struggle that inspired Detroit citizens to create amazing and innovative techno music. However, there are many other positive influences that for the most part, hold a more powerful and lasting presence for the musicians and fans here in the city.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Blogging and Writing

I just posted a discussion message to a Facebook group called “Ethnomusicology of Ourselves” which is about doing ethnographic research on topics and in places that are close to home, or that are home. Here is a portion of my post:

This is a nice discussion. As I'm finishing up my fieldwork in the next two months, I have been thinking about how I have had to completely reconfigure my notions of what fieldwork is supposed to look like. I have had to get beyond the image of a single fieldworker going somewhere else and doing fieldwork all the time for a year. For the first little while, I was plagued by insecurities about whether or not I was actually "doing" this right! I'm here with a family of five and homeschooling my boys. I did not receive a grant (still trying :)) so I ended up working full time about 6 months into my time here while James stays at home full time with our boys. I finally realized that I know what I am doing, I know what I want to get out of this research, and I sort of know how to get it, so I just had to embrace my reality and reinvent my own process to suit my situation. It has worked out wonderfully. There are so many diverse models for ethnographic research, it is really interesting to me to hear/read about other scholars field experiences.

So posting the link to my blog to fellow ethnomusicologists got me thinking about the audience for my blog, again. I don’t know of any ethnomusicologists or scholars who regularly read my blog. As far as I know, most of my readers are DJs, music critics, and fans/listeners. The current post on my blog when I posted this message to the Facebook group was “Welcome to the jungle…” and its partly about people wondering why I am here, and wondering if I’m trying to transcend my racial and ethnic identity and become Black. There’s a bit of sarcasm in the post and if I was successful (I still can’t tell), then it’s a bit humorous as well. I was not thinking of any kind of academic audience when I wrote this post, and I haven’t had that audience in my mind for my blog for a long time. There is a small readership for the blog, but one that I really appreciate. DJ WhoDat reads it, and we talk about it regularly. And since that last post about race and my own identity, she often teases me about how I really do want to be Black. I even brought over the wrong kind of beer one night – beer that was on sale because Black people don’t buy it…(that’s just a paraphrase of WhoDat’s words!) From my sitemeter I can tell that some other people in the Detroit Metro area read it, my brother sometimes reads it in Chicago, there are a few music bloggers/writers outside of Detroit who read it; I get some international readers, but I don’t think I’ve got many, or any, academic/ethno folks reading it. So my posts tend to be geared towards descriptions of what I am doing and learning here, I strive for a bit of humor and lightheartedness. There are some analytical, sort of academic posts here, but most of the time, my writing is more informal because that’s what I think suits this type of blog. It’s also one place in which I can flush out ideas and explore things in writing that are not yet solidified ideas in my head. So after I posted the link to the Facebook discussion, I started to feel a bit apprehensive and insecure about fellow scholars reading my blog. That’s okay though, I think I’ll keep going with what I’m doing, exploring my ideas in an open, honest way. I’m trying to make sure that I maintain a certain openness and flexibility, because otherwise I’ll get bogged down with strict ideas of what I’m supposed to be doing and will feel stuck because I just don’t fit into the standard story of what fieldwork is supposed to be, for a variety of reasons. That’s what I sometimes feel like I’m doing here – making up my own rules, because there is not a step-by-step manual for field research. There are some published works that present ethnographic models, and some scholars include detailed descriptions of their own experiences doing field research, including mistakes they made, their research models, approaches to interviewing, etc. Daniel Reed, an ethnomusicologist who researched Dan Ge performance in Cote d’Ivoire included excellent descriptions of his field experiences in his book, Dan Ge Performance: Masks and Music in Contemporary Côte d'Ivoire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Awesome, awesome, awesome book!

I feel like I’m making up rules as I go along, but actually, not really rules, because that connotes rigidity, and I’m not really following a rigid format full of rules (does anyone?). But I feel like I have been creating and developing my own approach to this experience and this research because having a family, not securing any funding, and working full time have a huge impact on the typical ethnographic research model. I am so thankful to have accomplished so much with the Roots of Techno conference in Oct. 2006 so that I could really just delve in to Detroit already knowing people, already having some research completed, and having a strong foundation from which to begin when I came here in Feb. 2008.

Following that discussion on Facebook, there was another discussion topic on that same group, “Ethnomusicology of Ourselves,” that specifically addressed blogging as a tool for communication in ethnographic research. Here is my post to that discussion:

I was just writing fieldnotes about this issue last week! I think the act of blogging, for my research at least, has been a wonderful way to involve some of the people who are participants in my research in the actual process of writing and analyzing experiences and ideas. For me the feedback loop is very positive. (The feedback loop was an issue brought up in a previous post in which the writer was referring to the cyclical process of learning information from people who participate in our research, writing it and publishing it in a public online forum, and the impact that the public representation of field experiences will have on the cultures/communities/people we are working with as well as its impact on our research.) It also feels honest to me to be able to responsibly present my own ideas to my research participants. I think the concept of "feedback" in general, as do many ethnomusicologists, is important to contemporary ethnographic research, in the form of feedback interviews, co-authoring of academic writing, etc.

In response to the concern with our impact as ethnographers, varying degrees of impact is unavoidable. If we operate from the perspective and understanding that culture is contingent and is constantly being negotiated and renegotiated, then our role as ethnographers can be understood within this complex of cultural change. I do not intend to diminish or ignore the actual impact that I am having as I conduct this research, however, whatever participatory activities that I engage in have tremendous impact, from interviewing, photographing, videotaping, sharing my recordings with participants who are present in those recordings, participating at performance events, learning to play, contributing my own assistance to events through volunteer work, etc. I see the act of presenting a portion of my research, primarily through descriptions of my fieldwork experiences, as yet another way that I am having an impact and engaging in a feedback loop.

I think that is a really important to be aware of these issues. Our impact as fieldworkers is quite large, and no matter what we do, we will have an impact. Our mere presence adds power and value to whatever it is we are researching – many people are still surprised to learn that I moved with my whole family to Detroit, not for a job or any financial gains, but to learn about something. That, I believe, has had a tremendous impact. My microphone and recorder have an impact, my video camera has an impact – one of the DJs I videotaped seemed super self-conscious and kept making excuses for why the set wasn’t going well for him and why the crowd wasn’t what he thought it should be. He did give me permission to video tape him, but I felt bad that the camera’s presence had a negative impact in that situation. It’s difficult to video tape DJs performing because their spaces are so tight and it is usually impossible to get any footage from afar that would be useful because I usually cannot see their hands and their equipment from the dance floor. So if you’re still reading this long post, then thanks! Next post I’ll let you in on some of the interviews I’ve been doing and some of the places I’ve been going to…

Tuesday, January 20, 2009




Friday, January 2, 2009

Welcome to the jungle!

Ha! That's on tv right now - I have been trying to get to posting on my blog for a while now tonight. But I first got distracted by a show on VH1 about the 100 greatest rock songs. Then I made a list of people that I still have left to interview here in Detroit - some of whom have agreed to talk with me but have yet to find a time to meet, and a few of whom I still need to contact. Then I made a list of a few last minute things I need to do before completing this research in February!! Fingers crossed that I can make that deadline. Then I got busy on Facebook...

Anyway, I had quite an eventful holiday season. My husband and brother put together turntables and a mixer for me!!! I am so excited to have my own setup at home. The tables and mixer used to belong to my brother, Gregory Dalphond, who is a DJ in Chicago. One of them is wooden and belt driven and was his first turntable back in 1996!! I'm very excited to have a belt driven turntable - now I can be really authentic! No, kidding, kidding - but it is cool to experience learning on something like an old turntable like a lot of DJs that I interview first learned on. The other table is a Technics and a Technics mixer. They gave me nice needles too. I'm very excited - and to spin on my very own tables...Moodymann "Det.riot". His latest release - it's fraking fabulous.

I've been thinking recently about some things that have come up in interviews or in casual conversations with friends here about my being here doing this research. I have heard confusion about why I am here, why I would move here to study this. Others have even commented, not to my face, about my racial and ethinc integrity - "Does she think she's Black?" or "Is she trying to be Black?" First of all, I have to laugh when I hear those things - have you seen me, have you heard me talk?? I'm a white nerd from Indiana who likes electronic music and appreciates the African American culture from which this music is created in Detroit. It's important enough to me that I chose to move my family to Detroit so that I could complete this research and write my dissertation on Detroit electronic music. This is what ethnomusciologists do - once you complete all your coursework, complete your master's degree, pass your Ph.D. qualifying exams, and get your dissertation proposal approved, then you begin some version of an intesive research project that lasts for an extensive amount of time. My version of this type of research was to relocate to Detroit and spend a year learning about electronic music in Detroit by interviewing people involved in this music and culture here, by attending lots of shows and parties, and by closely studying the performance and production of this music. So I'm not just some crazy white chic who uprooted her family to move to Detroit because I love Black people so much and want to be Black. I have a strong interest in African American history and culture and love Detroit electronic music - so coming here and doing this makes perfect sense to me. It's important enough to make an academic career out of it.

So, I'm tired now, I'm still white, and I am looking foward to extracting video from Terrence Parker's set on New Year's Eve two nights ago!! Yes, I got to video tape his entire set! It was very cool. So Happy New Year and Good Night.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Race and Music

Just found this on the Moodmat blog:

Moodmat One Question Interview: Theo Parrish

Amazing and on point about Detroit, the US, and music. The comments at the end of the interview by other readers are disappointing. You know, it is possible to be white and not get offended when a person of color points out that racism is alive and well throughout the United States in all its guises.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Winter Research

I came here in winter last February and now we're back here again…it's cold and snowy and I love it. The kids went sledding today with Pops while I sat at work and stuffed envelopes. Well, it's a good thing they have such an amazing father who will stay home full time! Blessed boys! Anyway, research has been picking up again. I just got home from a great interview with John Johr. We were at a restaurant in Ferndale called The Emory. I got to drink some nice beer and have an interesting interview with a young Detroit DJ. It was super loud in there though, I hope the recording turned out well. I should probably listen to it tonight to find out...he was speaking pretty loud into the mic, so that should help! So we had a great conversation, he was really friendly and interested in what I was doing here.

Oh yeah, that Scan 7 photo below – totally not mine. Copied and pasted. All the other photos on this blog are taken by me or by my husband. But I wanted to include that photo of Scan 7 so readers unfamiliar with them could get a visual sense of what I was talking about when I was describing that DJ Surgeon/Scan 7 party. Is that cool in blog world? I don't know, still sorta new at this.

And, a few days ago I googled record stores in Detroit trying to plan out a record store outing – not that I have any money to spend on anything, but I thought it would be cool to check out places that Detroit electronic musicians buy their music. Anyway, I stumbled on an article from the Metro Times, a local free paper, by Carleton S. Gholz, about record stores in Detroit from 2003. Then I found lots of other articles he had written from 2000 to 2008 on Detroit electronic music and remembered that he contacted me a few months ago through this blog. So now I have my very own Carleton S. Gholz archive!! Yes, I printed them all out – double sided though!

Friday, December 5, 2008

The sonic sources in electronic music are evasive.


I went down to see DJ Surgeon and one of the Scan 7 DJs play at TV Bar a few weeks ago. Its part of the Thursday series at TV Bar. They often have local DJs play on this night. I didn’t know anything about Surgeon, but I knew that I was excited to hear Scan 7 play – I didn’t know how many members would be there of Scan 7 (there are 7 of them), but I knew it would be good. It was an interesting night. It’s called TV Bar, so there were wide, flat screen TVs mounted all over the place. It’s a relatively large place, there are two main rooms. In the first room is the bar and lots of chairs and tables and couches – there were TVs all over playing sports. Some were hanging from the ceiling away from the wall, some were against the wall at the bar. In the second room, there was another, smaller bar that was not in use. There were TVs hanging from the ceiling above the bar there and there were TVs on the wall opposite the bar. There was also a TV on the wall behind the DJ equipment setup in the DJ booth. Some of the TVs in that room were turned off – there must have been at least 6 TVs in that room. But the TV behind DJ Surgeon was on while he was playing. It was tuned to Cartoon Network – so there were some goofy nerdo late night cartoons playing while Surgeon played – it was really weird and distracting. I found myself sitting down in a really tall bar chair listening to the very loud and excellent music (Surgeon was fantastic) and watching cartoons. I tried really hard to ignore the cartoons, but when I am in a club, I usually turn my eyes toward the DJ most of the time. I just find that the most interesting to watch. So my eyes automatically went to the DJ booth, and the TV was just so bright and alluring, it was difficult to avoid staring at. The volume was turned down completely and the closed captioning was on – so I could even read the shows. It was just weird. Thankfully, Surgeon turned off the TV when the Scan 7 DJ came on – then it felt more official, like all eyes and ears were finally focused on the music. It was a relief for me.


DJ Surgeon was really fun to watch. He was more like a turntablist than most other DJs I see play in Detroit. Kind of like what Terrence Parker does, but still very different. They both have their own distinct style and flow. Also, Terrence plays more house and “inspirational” music; Surgeon plays more techno and electro music. So that alone makes their sets sound different from one another. I was reading online about DJ Seoul today, and he seems like a turntablist as well. But I don’t see this term associated with any of these DJs in print at all. I’m using it because in my interview with TP this weekend, he described himself using the word turntablist. Surgeon seemed like a sonic surgeon – cutting and dissecting beats and other pieces of music to create a whole new musical performance. Terrence Parker was talking about this this weekend during our interview (yes, it was a great interview!) – he was describing his own DJ style, and turntablism in general, and he even brought up mashups as another example. He said these DJs take two pieces of music from two different contexts and manipulating them to create a whole new piece of music in its own context. It was very exciting to hear TP describe music and DJing using those ideas and terms – just along the lines of what I was hoping to discover here. Back to Surgeon – he was really precise, seemed like he was cutting records on the spot and melding new sounds together. It was strangely dark up in the DJ booth, but it was mainly because of all the insanely bright TVs around. That made everything else look really dark. Surgeon had a head lamp with a red light on – that was interesting. The crowd was mainly white and young, although there were a few African American people there. I was surprised by this – since both DJs were African American, and pretty important to Detroit’s electronic music, there might be a larger proportion of Black people in the crowd. But I have found that with events where the DJs play more techno music and less house music, the crowds are usually predominantly white. Still not sure why, trying to figure it out in my interviews.


I don’t know the Scan 7 DJs very well, or if they even call them selves DJs because they play live PA with drum machines, samplers and other electronic equipment. But the man from Scan 7 who was playing that night was basically hanging out with Surgeon in the DJ booth the whole night. When it was his turn to get on, he had a mask on covering everything but his eyes. He wore a Scan 7 baseball cap, and a long sleeve shirt and jeans. I think he had a UR shirt on. One of them turned off the TV and the Scan 7 guy got set up. Surgeon introduced him using his records – he put on a Kraftwerk track, maybe it was “Numbers” and made the “7” on the track play over and over. I can’t remember how he did it since I am writing this so long after, shame shame. There are three possibilities: Surgeon had two records playing the same song and he was going back and forth between both while Scan 7 played some sort of droning, ethereal sound on his equipment. Second possibility, Surgeon had a track that played the “7” segment on the Kraftwerk track over and over with an echo and some kind of droning music in the background. And third possibility, Scan 7 had that segment on his sampler and was manipulating it with other sounds to introduce himself. I don’t know, it’s often difficult to figure out where particular sounds are coming from. The sonic sources in electronic music are evasive. His set was magnificent. I had never heard Scan 7 before and he was really cool. I didn’t know what to expect. The music was super intense and so much fun to listen to and dance to. I was thinking there about something a DJ who used to wear a mask during his sets told me – that the mask that he used to wear was not about militancy or trying to scare people, he wanted to keep himself invisible and let the music stand out there alone for people to take and appreciate. I don’t know if that is the same philosophy for Scan 7, but that’s definitely the vibe I got. He was kind of in a corner, in the dark, with that mask and hat on, and really focused on what he was doing. He wasn’t oblivious to the crowd, I could tell he was aware of what was going on around him and how we all were responding to the music. But he was successful and being almost invisible behind the music. Surgeon would play with him periodically, adding some beat juggling or other turntablist techniques to the set.


I did not recognize anyone in the crowd. There were two drunk girls there, one was completely wasted and dressed up – she kept going up to guys and staring them down. Some guys were into her and would dance with her. There was this one guy who was clearly into the music during the Scan 7 set. He was kind of an indie hipster guy with some scruff and goofy glasses and skinny jeans. She kept going up to him and getting in his face – it was so silly, he was clearly uncomfortable and annoyed. A few other annoying things happened too while I was there. Sometimes I get really tired of going out by myself, but there’s just a few people that I know well enough here and who enjoy the kinds of shows I am going to. James often stays home with the boys because we can’t always afford a babysitter, but he also gets tired and really doesn’t want to stay out all night and then have to parent the next day. WhoDat and I sometimes go out together and we always have fun, but she doesn’t always want to go to the places I’m going to. My friend Ellen lives about an hours drive outside of Detroit, so that's not always easy for her either.


Anyway, it was a fun night. At the end, Surgeon called out that he had CDs. I went up there and he was really friendly. He had 2 mix CDs that he made and then a double disc of his own music that he produced. I bought that one for $10. I didn’t know what it would sound like, I just was in the mood to support and I had some money. It turns out the CD is excellent – I love listening to it. Well that was the end of my night. It was a good one.