Drew Glosik's Final Reflection

 

Link for music video titled "Foam Born (A) The Backtrack" by Between the Buried and Me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZHHACdrUZo

ESSAY:

Drew Glosik

501 Final Reflection

A Variety of Soundscapes

I found it largely beneficial to have had the opportunity to see what types of music my peers are listening to throughout the course and identify the disputed territories and feelings involved with the music. The most intriguing presentations to me were the Techno presentation, the Combat gangster/metal combination of music in war, and the effect of music in war-torn Uganda. My own presentation on Between the Buried and Me was designed to help people understand the origins of progressive metal through the rock, blues, and grunge movements of the 1960s through 1990s, and to illustrated the reasons why I am so fascinated with it.

To me, Techno music had been an obscure notion of “trance” and sound-mixing for as long as I was aware of the genre. I first experienced techno when I was eighteen and out with some friends on the weekend. I like to dance when the opportunity arises, and felt myself unable to control my impulse to groove around to the wholly instrumental and synthesized sounds of the DJ. I knew that techno had an affiliation with the drug abuse and particularly ecstasy, but that did not stop me from enjoying it and I still refuse to perceive ravers purely as drugees, and stereotype them into delinquency or social deviance. Something I was unaware of, however, was the large number of varieties of genres with techno, including trance, House, and electronica and all the dozens of subcategories within each.

What I was most intrigued by in the presentation was the origins of “squatting” and “warehouse” hangouts. I had always assumed it was simply a UK Punk trend that featured dropouts, users, outcasts, and dependents congregating somewhere they had the space to stretch out and call their own. I did associate the warehouse scene with drugs and crime since many of the contemporary “punks” in Europe are anti-system and anti-social except with the close-knit groups around them. To my surprise, techno was actually the truest origin of such activity; the underground scene of late-night dance was a phenomenon that went hand-hand with alcohol abuse and occasional drug busts by European, moreover German, authorities. To escape persecution and deprivation of the “right to party,” they simply squatted surreptitiously in the perfect place for a rave: the spacious acoustics of a Warehouse. They had all the room they needed and ideal circumstances for amplifying the non-stop dance music. For me, a strange social mystery was solved with regards to my previous understanding.

The presentation on what music soldiers chose going into combat was illuminating and was relevant to my own progressive metal presentation. Metal music has the energizing quality and aggressive overtones to support a soldier’s deadly agenda, which in certain respects I find to be a tragic corollary to the metal genre’s intensity. As made clear in the powerpoint, many soldiers had not even listened to the music beforehand and only became interested when they realized it served a practical purpose in battle: to provide an alternative ego in which firing a weapon and assaulting enemy lines is acceptable, even natural, with such aggressive sonic background. While I can never see myself thinking even once about harming an individual while listening to progressive metal, I do understand the underlying “hardcore” emotions behind the music.

Another important point brought up in the Combat presentation was that soldiers also listen to gangster rap when entering battle. I found it very enlightening to clarify that rap, like metal, was not only aggressive because of its origins in the “hood,” but also criminal and violent which differs from the majority of metal music. Violence, sexual exploitation, greed, and crime are unseemly themes that pervade rap and even dominate the radio. The thug-mentality and brutishness of “gangsters” is popularized and distorted by nearly all rap artists, and I personally see the whole lot of them as hypocrites since they idolize crime, ghetto lifestyle, and sex when in reality they are wealthy egomaniacs that are entirely untrue to their music and “gangster values” who exploit the pockets of the musically uninformed youth.

I had done research on child warfare all over Africa during this previous quarter, studying in detail the Congo, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and many others. I knew of refugee camps and displacement polices, and the tragedies associated with forcibly incorporating children into rebel armies. The main issue I found to be disturbing was the forced drug abuse placed upon the children by their older, wicked counterparts in order to subordinate them and desensitize them to the unspeakable violence they are made to conduct. Programs like UNICEF and Amnesty International were the main sources of aid for the communities in which children had been rescued, but not once did I find any information of the impact of music in their lives.

The Uganda presentation was meaningful to me because music differs from humanitarian aid in that it actually touches the soul of the listener, and in this case the corrupted souls of African youth. The improvised music and traditional dance meant that the children had a means of celebrating their life in a healthy fashion an recuperating from the iniquities of mass-slaughter that was thrust upon them by misguided rebels all across Africa. The former soldiers now had to re-socialize themselves and find new meaning in their lives with, hopefully, their families and relatives. The best way to express their natural divinity and youth was through music and dance in their own communities within displacement and refugee camps, where they could make a gradual recovery from intense trauma.

In the end I learned a lot from Music in Disputed Territories, and discovered much more about my own interest in music. I now have a great deal of respect for music I not formerly heard or taken interest in before, and know that everything has an underlying significance to its sound that I previously would have ignored. The variety of music such as politically charged Israeli Mediterranean, celebratory Bhangra, expressionist Tango, and freedom-oriented Apartheid protest has exposed me to an entirely different world and interpretation of music. The soundscapes I researched throughout the quarter gave me a better idea of what my musical appreciation is compared tot hat of my peers, and to which genres I can most genuinely relate in my everyday life.