Debunking The Concept of Live Music

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Debunking The Concept of Live Music

Boys Noize “Live” in Amsterdam

Over the summer whilst cruising around Sydney, I have begun to recognise that bill posters for various festivals have begun informing the public that various DJ’s will be performing ‘Live’, i.e  MAJOR LAZER (live); JUSTICE (Live);  BOYS NOIZE (live). After seeing what ‘live’ meant on several occasions, I felt confused… what was live? Is this advertisement of DJ’s being ‘live’ just a sad marketing strategy? Does now having a light show, an MC and using a sampler constitute a DJ as being ‘live’? Is this how the EDM performance is diversifying?

When musical promotional material informs that a specific artist is “live” it implies that there is an element of musical creation and artistic invention with an instrument. A CDJ or the DJ programs one uses on a Macbook are not musical instruments.  If I went to a pub and out the front it said ‘Live music on Friday nights’ and DJ was playing all night, I would be pissed off as any other person would be who enjoys live music. Now there is the old argument of DJ’s making art blah blah blah, look, get off your high horse guys, DJ’s are not Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock 69′ creating history with Star Spangled Banner, they are the guy mixing and pressing play.  Still a skill, still impressive when done with finess and persicion, but please, it’s not ‘live’ music, it’s psuedo-art. DJ’s create a collage of tracks that someone else has made prior to them getting on stage, thus their auditory scrapbooking maybe live, but musical creation is not.

So why is it advertised as live? Is the DJ not playing a mix tape this time round? Is there a drummer emulating a bassless floor beat? Is there now a light show? What is happening? I can only assume a couple of things; one is that the original members are ‘performing’ where they push a couple of extra buttons on a sample pad; they have a sad drummer who is likely getting repetitive stress injury from playing the same floor beat for 40mins or they have an MC who should have his microphone turned off. In conjunction with this, I believe that a marketting/PR team has decided to push the boundries of promotion and say “Well guys… DJ X isn’t just gonna be there… DJ X is performing LIVE” as if they are musicians on some dope bill, when really they are just DJ’s with a killer light show.  This kind of pisses me off, and gives me the impression that these promoters, PR and marketing companies think we are a bunch of simpletons that will run to the dog bowl when the bell is rung.

I do feel like it’s time for some change. If you are going to charge all this money for a festival and put live next to a bunch of DJ’s names, how about encouraging performers to actually be live music? How about getting live music? Its possible to perform electronic music live and some groups do it and guess what? It is really awesome and it is way more memorable than seeing a 40min DJ set of mainstream music that has been dubbed ‘live’. You can throw an MC on stage, get some dancers and bash a bongo if you want, but it’s still not enough to be performing live. Get a couple of synths, utilize your sampler in a professional manner (god, how I can not stress that enough) and make a show, create some art, make a vibe, give a performance that people will talk about and remember. Some of the greatest performances in history have been at festivals, why can’t electronic music join in? I get this impression that producers and electronic music artists are scared of mistakes, are scared of doing something that is different from the recording and are scared of breaking away from convention.  There is so much EDM, so many DJ’s and there is so much genius and creativity, there is no deficit here. By being more original and performing live, fans will potentially become more psychologically involved with both the performance and the artists creating a long term investment for promoters and the artists.

Now in saying all this, my goal isn’t to diss DJing or the skill it has and its place at festivals; it’s not some sub-par musical thing. It’s a lot of fun, and is perfect in the right contexts. I wouldn’t, for example expect to see The Stafford Brothers or Swedish House Mafia do anything I mentioned in this article and would expect to see them mix at some sort of mainstream day festival. However, how dope would it be to see Madeon bust out Pop Culture on his launch pad live? or to see Justice get a bunch of synths and play out their tracks? Or too see some more experimental artists have a brap (This used to be a word that meant electronic music jam and now seems to be urban onomatopoeia for a machine gun).

DJing is a skill in its own right and there are some people who are just absolutely outstanding at it. However it’s not ‘Live music’ and it should not be advertised, labelled or celebrated as such. Further more, if you want to be awarded ‘Live Music’ status, create and perform something salient. A couple of samplers, a light show, a drummer and an MC doesn’t make you live, make something else the focal point rather than the mixing of prerecorded music.

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