The Mystery of EDM: Or, How Guetta Killed Gaddafi

Every once in a while, it serves the public well to step back from their lives as the public and really take a long, hard look at themselves, especially in those areas of entertainment that most directly affect their image of public-ness. The more specific the public can get, the better. Then the public should say either "Hey, we like this, let's keep doing it and support it further" or "Hey, this sucks harder than asphalt, let's ditch it and move on to something better."  Sometimes this works out great (see: Frisbees, rock'n'roll, Adam Sandler's diminishing popularity), but sometimes the public messes up big time (see: Nickelback, Jersey Shore, every Adam Sandler movie that isn't Waterboy). To be fair, though, the public isn't too smart, so we have to cut them a little slack. And besides, it's not easy to pick the good stuff. Like clubbing baby seals, deciding what's worthwhile and what's a waste is very hit or miss. Also like clubbing baby seals, it gets people madder than you would expect. If the right thing isn't picked there is rioting in the streets, anarchy in the capitol, disarray in the supermarket. Don't believe me? Look at what happened after Lost ended. Basically Lincoln's death all over again. Much like the assassination of a beloved president, the public could simply not handle the truth that Jack and Kate and the fat guy were all in purgatory/dreamed the entire thing/became polar bears. (I barely got through the first episode of Lost.)

But fear not, fellow Lost-confused-me-ers, for you will soon have your chance at societal redemption. Another Day of Judgment approaches. And this one is free of smoke monsters and time travel. Soon, we shall have our chance to decide whether the cultural phenomenon of Electronic Dance Music makes it big, or falls to the dust like that one guy on Lost. (Last reference, I promise.)

A quick primer: Electronic Dance Music (or to those in the know/a hurry, EDM) is the Millennial generation's response to all the crappy music they grew up listening to. It didn't even actually have to be crappy; in fact, probably nine out of ten are still considered quite enjoyable today. 

The exception being "Achy Breaky Heart".

The problem was that those Millennials' parents liked them, and played them until their cassette players broke, and then tried to impose their musical choices upon their spawn. Fulfilling the social contract of hating anything the older generation likes, Millennials decided to take it upon themselves to, en masse, create and quickly populate a genre of music completely different from whatever had come before. As luck would have it, computers were gaining popularity around the same time, and much like today, older people then didn't really get how they worked. So the Millennials used computers and other electronic gizmos to create their music, just to widen that gap even further. Then Kraftwerk, and Daft Punk, and Deadmau5, etc etc. I'm glossing over much of the details, of course, but I promised a quick primer, not a long and drawn-out history of all electronic music ever. The gist of it is that EDM has been around for a while yet has gained its major strength in the last decade or so.

A particular strong group driving the adoption of EDM is Generation i, a subsection of the Millennials, the first generation to go through puberty with the iPod and really kickstart the new wave of personal electronics; in my book, anyone born after 1993 (ish). Gen i, of which I consider myself a member, is pushing EDM because it combines two of the main defining characteristics of our times: technology and rampant drug use rebellion from existing norms. 

Now more than ever the lines of personal electronics and young people striving for freedom are intersecting. Every teenager has a cell phone and uses it to do whatever the freakin' hell he or she wants and there's nothing anyone else can do about it, relatively speaking. The technology that we can literally hold in our hands has given us, in many respects, close to ways to affect the real, non-cyber world. Look at the Arab Spring, Russia, hell, even the USA to a certain extent; revolutions, big and small, all facilitated (though by no means completely accomplished) by technology and social media. It's actually pretty weird, if you think about it. And a little scary.

The cultural phenomenon of EDM snorts a similar line of coke between weird and scary. To some it possesses this air of camaraderie and all-together-ness –not unlike any other musical genre– where simply experiencing it with friends is tantamount to Nirvana (the place, not the band); to others, it is a deadly social scene that does the world more harm than good. After all, they don't call them "raves" for nothing. Like Twitter, EDM has both die-hard aficionados and unmoving detractors.

It's not like Twitter at all. That was just to complete the analogy. My point is, the technology that allows people thousands of miles away to correspond on world-changing matters also is responsible for all of Skrillex's famous bleeps and bloops. They are irrevocably connected.

Quick sidebar test: which of these are real electronic music genres, and which ones are words that I heard a drunken hobo mutter into his pillow of vomit?

1. Moombahton
2. Indietronica
3. Suomisaundi
4. Ragga-jungle
5. Lowercase
6. Crunk
7. Skweee
8. Death Industrial

Answer: all of them. Also, I only associate with hobos that are tripping on stolen acid, not drunk.

Which brings me to my next point: the EDM drug scene. Now, as much fun as it is to be all curmudgeonly and shake my fist at those darned kids doing those darned drugs on my lawn and reminisce about how back in the good ole days, the drugs were so much better, and how nothing's been the same since Jimi (RIP), but unfortunately I need to make an actual point about those kids and those drugs.

Old people have all the fun.

And that point is: yes, Mom, those kinds of kids do exist. No, I am not one of them. I keep my drugs off other people's lawns, in a considerate fashion. Teenagers, twenty-somethings, lonely spinsters, they all do it at concerts. Ecstasy is the big one, but hey, they're not picky: pot, coke, LSD, 'shrooms, you name it, a person in brightly colored and oddly patterned clothing is ingesting it right now to a loud, thumping, 4x4 beat. This is not new, though. It's not like someone heard "Levels" and thought, "Gee, you know what would really go great with this tunage? Some MDMA and subsequent dehydration!" People have been doing drugs at concerts quite literally forever. You think people could sit through an entire Prince concert sober? They called it Woodstock because you could understand all those hard consonants even when someone was slurring his speech. Even the Beatles, for Pete's sake. Illicit substances and music go together like, well, illicit substances and music. There aren't many more cohesive pairs in history. All you need is some sex and you've got the rallying cry of many a '70s rock group and its groupies. Narcotics have been a part of the music scene since before there was a scene, and for better or worse they're probably not going anywhere.

A real life example of the connection between EDM and an event of global proportions: sources close to the Tunisian guy who lit himself on fire say that he was listening to some Swedish House Mafia mere moments before self-immolation. Okay, I made that up. But, in all seriousness, there are definite parallels between the musical rebellions of electronica and the revolts of actual countries, beyond simply the shared technology used to foment both. The age gap between each's opponents and supporters, the speed in which each's popularity spread, the beat drop...think of it like two identical people existing simultaneously in alternate universes. Neither really knows what the other does, nor cares, nor goes out of his way to affect the other's life, yet they are nonetheless inextricably connected, as Superman and Bizarro Superman have shown us time and time again. 

Where do I stand on the matter? Wow, public, that's no way to determine for yourself if it's a Frisbee or Nickelback. If I start giving you all the answers I might as well call you "Ben's Public," which, despite the nice ring it has and the handsome image it conjures in your mind, is not what I need in my life right now. I will, however, give you this last summation: EDM is the perfect youth rebellion tool because it combines a sea change in all the things that young people are naturally more attracted to than older generations: music, drugs and technology. Perfect as in perfect storm, not perfect score on the SATs. It's not necessarily a good thing, nor a bad thing; right now it's just a thing. We youngsters love different, simply because old people hate it. And EDM is different enough to receive a lot of love soon.

But, the jury's still out on how it will be fully received. Ball's in your court, public.

Ben Hornung will be incommunicado for the next three weeks, hunting for wild William Shatners. Please direct all questions, complaints, birthday wishes, threats, booty calls, etc, to his secretary.