Dubstep and its affect on World Music

World Music: Dubstep

For me and most of my peers, music was an extremely important part of growing up. It helped give us social identity, credence and frankly something to talk about and yet with it being such a huge part of most modern adolescence lives, the music that was popular and well known did not, in most cases, vary from certain formulas. The consumer society that typifies the west makes ones taste in music part of ones cultural identity. If you embrace emotional rock, you’re an emo and thus are expected to wear dark clothing, too much eyeliner and sport a fringe. If you embrace heavy metal you’re expected to be surgically attached to your band hoodie and exchange visits to the hairdressers for visits to the tattoo parlour, and if you’re an indie kid then skinny jeans, cardigans and clear glass heavy rimmed glasses are, again, what is expected of you. This kind of culture in the West, where our music taste will undoubtedly help dictate how we dress, what we say and who we spend time with, it is very difficult to find the opportunity to listen to music from other genres, cultures and countries.

The rise of mainstream dubstep, however, bought the melding of different musical genres to the forefront of the adolescent consciousness, and has allowed adolescents to embrace music and artist from across the globe, simply though accessibility. Transnationally, as music has developed across the world, for those of us born and bred in countries like England and America, it was difficult sometimes to hear works from places like Brazil, Turkey and South Africa, but dubstep labels and even simple online appreciation organisations such as the much acclaimed Generation Bass (http://generationbass.com/) spend there time researching and embracing music that would otherwise receive little or no acclaim in the west.  Dubstep, remixing as it does songs or even riffs familiar to most Western adolescent’s ears with themes, ideas and even instruments that are new to them, allows one to come across different forms of music in a modern Western context. Though of course the influences of the east, of Africa and of nearly every country in the world can be found in some Western music if looked for hard enough, never before has there been a forum in which the melting pot between cultures is so blatant, and indeed is heralded as that which defines the genre. This popularity has allowed musicians from other countries to market and promote their music, as finally there is a niche available to them that is both a popular and profitable platform fro m which to showcase their work, Peruvian band Barrio Calavera being a perfect example of this, their mixer Luis ‘Wicho’ Garcia becoming acclaimed on the dubstep scene, and marketing their now freely online available album as a ‘mash up,’ a mixture of dance, reggae, chicha, rock and ska, being another genre which has made a resurgence during the rise of dubstep.

In conclusion, the recent developments in electronic music and rise of dubstep have enabled transnational works to be available on a more mainstream and accessible scale, marking a new stage in the growth of the music business.

Alex Kellas