By Chris Manik
Many of the most influential genres of music: hip-hop, punk rock, etc., were direct products of countercultural movements. As per a helpful site , these musics were a part of some type of creative resistance movement formed in basements, bedrooms, and garages (contact the guys from garage door repair northside to fix any repairs). This is also the story of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) a catch-all term incorporating House, Techno, Disco, Garage and other styles and sub-styles of dance-orientated electronic music. While electronic Dance forms were popping up in a number of places around the early 1980s, Detroit, Chicago, and New York formed the epicenter of the movement: Larry Levan and Disco in New York City NYC; Ron Hardy and House in Chicago; Juan Atkins/Model 500 in Detroit. Innovators like Kevin Saunderson and Frankie Knuckles floated in between a few of these cities on a regular basis, being influenced weekend after weekend, leading to their individual and collective ability to give audiences some of the greatest (most iconic and imitated) house and techno records of all time. Larry Heard, David Mancuso, and Robert Owens are other major innovators among the community that comprised the deep roots of American Electronic Dance Music Culture.
Detroit House music was influenced by Motown and German electronic music pioneers, Kraftwerk. NYC DJs were influenced by earlier Philadelphia disco sounds, the band Chic, and 80s funk boogie and pop records. Chicago House music was influenced by all of the above. From the bedrooms to disco dance floors, from cheap drum machines to upscale night club systems, House music’s presence grew steadily across popular culture in the 1980s. In New York City during the 1980s, the Disco and House scenes were home to downtown financial district suit and ties, busboys from midtown, break dancers from the Bronx, the LGBTQ community, and the ‘wild west’ that once was (paradoxically) the East Village. Representatives from these communities got together every weekend to dance at the Paradise Garage. Dance music culture was the unifying element among these diverse groups. To this day, Dance music is still accepting, inclusive, self-reliant, and purposefully mindful of everyone and their individuality. It is rooted in the freedom to be yourself. Fast forwarding to the present, Dance music is popular in a variety of environments from its prevalence at big festivals to small clubs. Dance music is more popular in the USA (and in numerous territories farther afield) than ever before, but it frequently has nothing to do with hands-in-the-air egos or full-on fashion campaigns brought on by the mainstream festival pop EDM side of things. Dance music is also a safe haven for the marginalized.
Before I go any further, I would like to articulate some important differences that have emerged between conceptualizations and cultures of EDM, House and Techno. EDM is the commercially successful, pop-radio friendly version of House and Techno. House music is the groovier and soulful side of Dance music- often times slower in BPM, between 115-125. Techno includes the more mechanical, fast-paced styles of Dance music. Often times starting at 125 BPM. Now when you attach words such as “Minimal” or “Acid” to the main genres of House and Techno, you have further sub genres (i.e., Acid House or Minimal Techno.) Of course, there are variations between the “soulful nature” of both House and Techno. Nothing is concrete. These are just broad brush-stroke generalizations, which are perhaps inevitable consequences of attempts to categorize.
Dance musicians used the Roland TB303 bass synthesizer and launched Acid House musical subgenre with its recognizable sonic imprint. The TB303 was a sequencer mono synth designed by Roland to “replace” actual bass players – however, this synth ended up being totally useless anywhere else besides DIY bedroom music, which made it ideal for Techno and House. The Roland Tr808 – which in time has become arguably the most important and influential drum machine ever – was introduced in 1980 and directly influenced the earliest Detroit Techno/Electro records of Juan Atkins aka Cybotron/Model 500.
Many of the most (artistically and commercially) successful producers and music makers in Dance music history, made this music in their bedrooms or home studios on $400 samplers and drum machines, along with probably a few keyboards and some creatively sourced and deployed samples they found. Yes some of the ‘bigger’ artists were making music in expensive studios, but this real or authentic EDM is rooted in the underground, the counter culture. Being a formally trained musician wasn’t as important as just understanding how to make a great record. For me, that is also musicianship at its finest: resistance to the norm, achieving high quality musical outputs regardless. These DIY, disruptive and even confrontational characteristics can also be seen in hip-hop, punk music, and other sub-culture genres.
I come from a hip-hop background and used to make beats in high school. I would sketch fake album designs while my calculus professor tried to make me understand derivatives and integrals – Calculus. Yeah, I did not want to hear any of that noise. The only noise that interested me was white noise turning into a snare drum or hi-hat. My first true introduction to Dance Music came during my senior year in high school from listening to old DJ mix CDs including the music of Northern Exposure, the Global Underground series, basically anything I could get my hands on. Sometime around sophomore year in college at the wonderful State University of New York College at Oneonta, I bought myself two turntables and an iMac with Apple Logic digital audio workstation (DAW) software. I wanted to start experimenting with DJing and producing House and Techno music. Admittedly, the early stuff I listened to or tried to mix wasn’t entirely cool or sophisticated, but that was beside the point. I started to learn the fundamentals of mixing two records and why it was even done in the first place.
Let me dive into the process of Mixing records a bit deeper. Your end goal as a DJ is simple: to keep the party going. Your goal should also consist of matching tempos/BPM, but not required if you are playing Disco and tracks of various styles from Funk and Soul to House, which often have intros. To clarify, you can hit play on the 1 sometimes when playing these types of records. Back in the days of The Loft, David Mancuso was famous for “presenting” music moreover, highlighting the sounds and songs. He would fade a track out and bring the next one in. Mixing and blending tempos became more of a norm in the 80s at venues like Paradise Garage by Larry Levan. When I am performing my DJ Set, I am matching the beats in my headphones via the “cue” button on the DJ mixer. I am matching it with the main track playing out for everyone else on the dancefloor. Once the blend is how I like, I can choose when to bring it in by way of the volume faders. Certain tracks have particular parts that really work better at certain times. It depends on the music, but sometimes quick transitions work and at other times, longer ones are ideal. Some DJs just prefer always to go one route over the other – there is no ‘wrong’ way to be creative. Finally, as I am bringing in the new track, I am adjusting the EQ buttons on the DJ mixer. For example, lowering the lows and slightly touching the highs. If the main track playing was all at 12 o’clock, the current track should eventually get to this point too. Whatever you do to the incoming track, make sure you are doing the opposite to the current track playing. This will help to maintain smoother transitions and keep the party going! I think consideration for Key signature is important, especially if you are playing mainly vocals. But it is not something that is vital. Part of what makes DJing so much fun while blending is taking risks. Sometimes a bassline may drop out on its own in the final 1 minute of a track (ideal time for mixing out into new track) and a bare vocal is left over the incoming bare beat. These are some of my favorite moments blending tracks.
During my early undergraduate years, I began taking music production more seriously. In particular, I went from producing hip-hop music into more electronic flavors. Eventually, I got a synthesizer – a Roland Juno 106 – and was totally blown away. I thought to myself, “Wait a minute, I could make a funky bass sound, six note ambient pad, and yes white noise that could sound like snare drums, ALL in one machine?” I started to research the Juno 106 and where it was used. I had not realized that everyone from synth pop bands like Tears For Fears, to the almighty Quincey Jones had used this synth at some point in the ‘80s. But you know who else was using it? Kevin Saunderson up in Detroit. Josh Wink out in Philadelphia. Laurent Garnier over in France, and Moby while he had made the soundtrack for the Leo DiCaprio movie The Beach. Many of these artists I hadn’t really heard of just yet, but researching the Juno 106 really peaked my interest. Who were these “electronic” musicians and techno DJs? All I knew were global underground mix CDs and some of the more pop-ier forms of House music at that time. I began to dig and dig, and somewhere around my senior year in College – 2006/2007 – Beatport launched. Beatport is based in Denver, CO, and was the first online shop for downloading House music. “Hot damn”, I said to myself. I don’t have to just buy vinyl records from England anymore? I could literally jump on this website and spend $20, download 20 of the most underground tracks I had ever heard up until that point in my life, toss them onto a CD, and DJ them out? This was amazing. Now I can do the same, but use a USB interface instead.
That final year at college, all I wanted to do was make music. Now my undergraduate degree required an internship at a music industry related field. I choose Ultra Records in Manhattan. Although they were more on the mainstream EDM end of things, I learned a lot from the experience. I realized that I wanted to be an artist, and not really the “business guy”. I just had too much musical creativity brewing in my mind all the time. Between 2007 and 2008, I made music that kept getting rejected by various house and techno labels. I sent out so many demos. Nothing clicked. Eventually, however, I started going out more and taking in all of the underground house and techno culture in NYC and not just listening to the music at home. This gave me proper perspective and was the final touch that set me on the path to peer recognition. A few years later in 2009, I signed my first big record called “Park To The Slope” named after Park Slope, Brooklyn, to Josh Winks’ legendary house and techno label “Ovum Recordings.” About a year later I signed with my first agent, and I started to get invited to DJ in territories including Scotland, France, Germany, Spain, and Russia. Since then, I have been lucky enough to play in roughly 40 countries worldwide and DJ’d at legendary venues like Panorama Bar in Berlin, Womb Tokyo, Fabric London, Space Ibiza, Revolver Melbourne etc.
Recently, the popular EDM end of Dance music has grown into a mega industry, bringing in an estimated 2 billion USD in 2015. The Coachella music festival featured 32 DJ acts in 2017, while the Grammy awards nominated Louie Vega this past year for Dance album of the year. Louie Vega is a legendary New York house DJ, and one half of Masters At Work, one of the most influential remix teams of all time. Vega has been doing it for a long time, and it took almost 20 years to get the first true house album nominated by the Grammys. While the Grammys first introduced a dance music category in 1998, the winners of the award have not reflected the nature of Underground Dance Music culture. Daft Punk lost best dance category in 1999 to Madonna, while Cher won for “Believe” in 2000, and in 2001, the Baha Men won for ” Who Let The Dogs Out,” demonstrating the lack of acknowledgement of integral subcultural EDM by the music establishment (that ultimately serves to line its own pockets through promoting products to a record-buying public, so the late recognitions comes as no surprise in this marketized, commoditized context.)
In short, popular mainstream EDM has brought the spotlight back to Dance music culture as a whole. It is up to us underground DJ’s, as dance music ambassadors, to make sure the light is also directed toward the currently darker corners of Dance Music, including the roots of House and Techno. Highlighting cities like Detroit, Chicago, and NYC, where many of the most seminal artists within the genre are from. We cannot move forward as a culture until we fully understand the past of these impactful human beings and their musical contributions which have created such long lasting, impactful and influential artwork.
MANIK fired onto the electronic music scene in 2011 with releases on Ovum, Poker Flat and Culprit. Since his electronic beginning, he has also released on labels including B-Pitch Control, Kim Ann Foxman’s Firehouse, Huxley’s label NIO, Fresh Meat Chicago and he is known for edits of Janet Jackson and the Beastie Boys. This essay – currently in review at the /Journal of Popular Music Education – outlines a brief history of electronic dance and house music from MANIK’s perspective, and briefly discusses how MANIK got started DJing.