Towards the contemporary sound is a 'speech given by Aurelio Cianciotta during the seminar' The sex appeal of the inorganic, a seminar on electronic music 'through the plots of dj culture from its beginnings.

'In a short span of time, music has become the subject of public discussion and part of the general culture'. This is not the beginning of a polite introduction to my speech, it is already a quote, it is extrapolated from an article in a magazine this week or last year, refers instead to the musical situation in early 800 a text by Thomas Nipperdey, German historian. This, briefly, to try to frame as the interest in certain subjects, related to music production and its imaginary, is by no means something new. The curiosity for music, often superficial and exaggerated, it is not only the phenomenon of our times, on the contrary, always, in all Western societies (and not only) about music we discuss, we are passionate about, argue and are processed theories. In 1911 Werner Sombart argued, for example, that the great musical production depended on by the huge amount of money in circulation and that this led to a flattening, a production of entertainment or to excessive competitive offer with always new incentives to beyond the true art. In 1911 we already had the problem of some forms of musical expression that would have been inauthentic, not true art, because the result of a production too standardized, born from the great demand entertainment of the public and not by a spontaneous inspiration. Those standardized forms, inauthentic, would become later masterpieces, the fundamental works of bourgeois musical culture. This discourse on music production inauthentic looks like a hundred years later one of the many speeches sull'appiattimento due to the evolution in the music and the massive use of digital technologies: technologies that would subtract according to some soul, warmth, naturalness. As if the violins, cellos, or any other traditional instrument have grown in the past spontaneously on trees (and they were also the result instead of the much sought after techniques, we think of the work, to the sum of knowledge, which are essential for the production of a good violin). As if the ability or otherwise of a traditional musician, his technical ability, it was not, in fact, even this technique, commonly the result of a school and a tradition precise. If your digital music, electronics, especially the dance, again, is often perceived as phony, artificial, in the same way, outside of the circles close to the dynamics of the new sounds, the figure of dj, difficult, is perceived in its creative aspects and productive: the traditional composers, would belong to a higher level of artistic expression, as the original authors of the idea and even the simple musicians would be more in touch with the real music because even execution is possible to infuse a particular spirit through its own subjective interpretation. I think the issue that is not perceived by the layman is precisely the strongest feature of DJing and interesting activity: creative manipulation from an immense catalog of possibilities. Especially for most of the adult audience, and involuntary passive consumers of new sounds, which in any case are everywhere, it is really difficult to decipher this figure beyond the stereotype of animator party or mere executor of other people's songs. You ever wonder why the music of advertising are done that way? Why suddenly certain sounds begin to pervade their lives and others disappear? The resistance to accept and recognize the authorial aspects of the profession for many of the DJ continues, sometimes even in the same fields specifically music. It 'difficult to grasp the essence of this relatively new form of expression as an intermediary between the musical knowledge, the contemporary, the new drives into layers consisting of active public, often with difficulty mediated through the controversial record market needs. Some DJs try to compensate for this in the common perception, emphasizing its continuous production and compositional aspects of their profession, always pushing as much as possible on the slopes that bring their experience to that of the musicians, even better, to that of the musicians and composers . At the same time we are witnessing another curious phenomenon: many musicians opt for an approach disc jockey, or blatantly simulate it. The reasons are obvious: the nature of DJing, its flexibility, they do not need very large and expensive equipment, enables easier spread on with their musical vision. E 'was the fortune of many subcultures, such as reggae or hip hop that thanks to dee jay have spread massively and in a short time. The lack of the status of the author did not prevent, however, that the figure of the DJ has become extremely important today, but this is not because the problem of an unacknowledged authorship of that role has been resolved. In many cases, even in the market, it is preferred to ride the media side, more emphasis on the aspects of communication that approached the DJ to a pop star, avoiding all, carefully, to set or point out the real issues. To my natural formation, are less interested in the person, to repeat, or claim the need of authors, even if it is, in our case, a new type of authors, which would be interesting to make due investigation. It seems to me, simplifying the issue, that the evolution of knowledge, techniques and technologies, create new dynamic face, always leads to the use of new tools and the development of new strategies.

It may be interesting, in a meeting like this, briefly trace the coordinates and reconstruct how the passage that bears dj closer and closer to the role of electronic artist, experimenter original sounds and multiple cultures. Before you venture into a chronicle of the evolution of recent years (for obvious reasons can only be very brief) I would like to mention in relation to these issues another aspect, crucial, in my opinion, also in the relationship with the advent of new technologies. There are important questions not yet definitively resolved critically, music and other artistic fields, in relation to everything that revolves around the concept of originality, when it has already passed the stage of technical reproducibility and has entered fully in the age of electronic manipulation total. How to define new aesthetic forms, obtained using the countless digital processing techniques, now customary in many fields of art? For example, when a musician, as today is absolutely normal that it is, use sound samples, sound libraries already packaged, to produce new music, or use particular software and plug-ins to turn fragments or parts taken from other productions, what kind of operation performs compared to the traditional notion of original work? When a DJ does a remix of a song, that's a new work? An original product of intelligence and personal knowledge? Conceptually, the notion of work with which this has to do? Perhaps does not enter into crisis facing these new processes, the very idea of ​​creative work and artistic work as they are commonly understood? Leave you to your thoughts on these questions and I prefer to go the easiest paths of how this was done fully productive transition induced by the digital music today.

How did the culture of DJing? In each reconstruction, the stories overlap, often enriched by further evidence, we can speak of different narratives, more or less shared, which take on different characteristics depending on the tribe that they speak. In this sense, effective expresses doubts inherent in any single interpretation, the music journalist Greil Marcus in his' Lipstick Traces' stating that 'the problem of the roots in the culture is controversial. Each new show 'says' rewrites the past, criminals turns old into new heroes, old heroe
s in those who should not have ever born and new characters go to rummage in the past in search of predecessors, because the roots are legitimate and current dubious '. The figure of the dj was born in the fifties mainly by the interaction between the recording industry and the new media radio. From the very beginning dj become through direct and privileged, between the market and consumers, the first to come into possession of new releases and the first to have direct contact with the public. The DJ is the one who always listens to music most of all, definitely a lot more, both of the same musicians composers.
A small digression. Today, in the areas of music production, there are many who believe that the approach as a musician is just what restrains more creativity, because if you follow the same rules, you end up doing things for granted. DJs, as always, for attitude, listen also very heterogeneous materials, sensing ahead of other possible contamination between the styles and sounds of new solutions. But back to our history on the evolution of this figure. All sixty years have been dominated by the rock where the emphasis was more focused on the idea of ​​live, but at the same time in the mid-sixties in New York began to appear the first nightclubs. At that time there was a great need for new things, style suburban linked to formal values ​​of the fifties went into crisis, began to form a multifaceted scene. In the frenzy of a wealthy nightlife reborn became possible to switch from a twist-party Ondine by a sequence of wild dancing to Dom in St. Mark's Place, a place before then frequented only by people of color. A sort of beginnings of nightclubbing: simultaneously with the first stirrings of pop art, a generation began to experience mental acceleration and new psychedelic flurries. In the early '70s much of that excitement was already finished, and a return to the nostalgia took over again. Quoting again Greil Marcus' The mainstream of rock and roll, which in 1975 was pretty much all white, middle-class, he continued to pluck the strings with his rhythms passively compliant. Adventure and risk were watchwords, then, hypocritical words, in a period itself become hypocritical: the sixties. Then the dead, collapses and sfiancamenti that accompanied the struggles and efforts of that era were transformed into hypocritical slogan of the seventies: 'survival'. The only exception to that period in terms of radicalism is black music, the funk of James Brown and Curtis Mayfield, rhymes astonished by Gil Scott Heron, the sparse syncopations of jazz maverick. At the center of that scene there were still musicians, authors, in all respects, with all un'abusata aura of inspired genius but damn he could not credibly hold indefinitely. In some parts of the world are politically committed years in Italy, for example, but musically, compared to major developments since the mid-seventies, for a while 'time, there will be only years of great flattening. Since the United States and wildfire all over the world will affirm the phenomenon of disc that also draw on to black music, basically from the tradition of rhythm and blues and soul.
The clubs will become the major centers of diffusion of these new sounds, nevertheless, excluding a few legendary figures, the figure of the DJ is not so important, when related to the enormous scale and the extreme success of the phenomenon. In the film, which will consecrate that 'epic The Saturday Night Fever is not by chance be a dancer Tony Manero-Johnn Travolta, to be the hero. Others were the stars of the time. You have to get to 1977 before recording other upheavals. The intense explosion of punk in England will clearly be the cultural phenomenon that will clear the history, becoming the tabula rasa model par excellence of all youth movements. In spite of everything, in those years, hidden, somewhere else, something already seething cauldron in the confusion that will give life to electronic music as we know it today. A short step back Autobahn, Kraftwerk's first release of 1974, at the time it was cataloged as 'conceptual rock', the same way as Pink Floyd or King Crimson, their second work, Trans-Europ Express, it is precisely the 1977. The influence that Kraftwerk, Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider, two students of music theory at the Conservatory in Dusseldorf, exercised over Europe, it was not immediately obvious, but a few of what would soon become the pioneers at House, Chicago and Detroit immediately metabolized the scope of those new synthetic sounds, that same lesson also inspired a black dj in New York, known as Afrika Baambaata, along with a white producer of great value, Arthur Baker: a new genre called electro, contraction of electronic funk , would soon be born from those insights, giving rise in turn to different influences. Simultaneously with those contaminants, by that same energy and the same urban ghettos created the first hip hop, we remember people like the Soul Sonic Force, Kurtis Blow, the Sugarill Gang, the scene around the graffiti. It will all start since moving at breakneck speed, and previously unimaginable. In those years, in the dancehall ghetto blacks, there will be a new phenomenon, which will be essential for all the techniques of contemporary DJing and music production: the dishes of the turntables and the mixer will start to be used, no more than a limited extent, as a simple means of mechanical rough, but creatively in the juxtaposition of the songs, the use of techniques scracthing and rap, giving life through a skill very manual, new rhythms. The turntable and the mixer will become all the effects of new musical instruments. To understand how this is still significant today, just to note, that at present, in a period in which dominate the digital media, sales of professional turntable exceed in number those of electric guitars. Not only dishes, and mixers, become a real musical instrument, the whole sound system, this also derived from the tradition of Jamaican music, they rise to a fundamental element of the nascent sound, creating the conceptual premises and practices, the idea of positive use of technology in music consumption. There is a long history of venturing into a new electronic musical instruments. I can only quote one fact: analog synthesizers already existed for some time, but suffice it to note that in the mid-seventies a Moog 3 would cost more than $ 10,000 for understanding how media technology at that time were only accessible to the wealthy few record producers and large studies of the major labels. He was a musician of Italian Giorgio Moroder, one of the pioneers in other directions, always between mid and late seventies, to experience the raw sounds of synthetic dance beats, in a period largely unexplored, even by critics, it will affect a lot, however, all precursors at House American, who continually cite Italy and the so-called euro-disco among their first models. In Detroit the Italo-disco will be known simply as 'progressive', parallel to the phenomenon of synth-pop and during those years it was not unusual to find those sounds together with the nascent new wave more electronics, along with the funk of George Clinton and even to the soul origin of Motown. Depeche Mode, ABC, together with the Human League, are just some of the European bands in the early eighties were further references to start, prior to the first house-techno sounds, as well as across the globe took to the same function the Japanese Yellow Magic Orchestra. The influences intertwined, bouncing from one side and the other on the planet, even if Detroit and Chicago, in particular, were the main fulcrums on which were structured around those first electronic intrusions in the music consumer. In 1983, Yamaha launched the world's first implementation of frequency synthesis technology for the mass market, the DX7 keyboard, which has a circulation of over 200,000 units sold, will exceed ten times the sales of any other synthesizer ever produced. A mini moog analog in those years will begin to be affordable f
or any musician, more or less the same price as a normal keyboard. The American house is not born as an elitist phenomenon, just read the chronicles of those years, in contrast, has a strong connotation of class and is completely permeated by the culture of people of color. In Detroit, a city with strong social contradictions, the home of the automotive industry. will affirm the first figures of dj typically house, usually known as Detroit Techno. We recall some of the names: Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May, Juan Atkins. Jeff Mills, above all, start using a portable four-track recorder, with sampling and bases much craft, bringing the attitude of hip hop into dance music. And then names like Carl Craig, Blake Baxter, Todd Terry in New York. The fame of these DJs and a new sound will bounce quickly in the UK, which has always readily picked up the energy produced by new musical movements making phenomena then become much greater. A new synthesizer, around the mid-eighties, will attract the attention of DJs and producers, his name is Roland TB 303: it is still used. The 303 was originally sold as a generator of low to accompany soloists but the sound that DJs were able to develop using the new tool had nothing in common with a normal bass guitar played, gave the idea, rather, something psychedelic and a bit 'dazed. From those sounds took the genre alive Acid, a variant of the Chicago house: we arrived already in 1987, the massive success of these sounds is unstoppable and will pass from the clubs of Ibiza clubs such as Shoom and Spectrum. The summer of 1987 will be remembered as The Summer Of Love, with all its load of hype, excitement, especially the media, also caused by the proximity of those sounds with the spread of new substances illegal empathic. The scene will change and will move after a short time by those clubs in open spaces, often abandoned, giving life to the scene of the warehouse parties and raves. That forced overexposure could not last forever, in 1991 the scene will change again and the music will tend to return to a more underground integrity. New names will appear on the horizon, young DJs such as Richie Hawtin, and will affirm labels like Plus 8 and Underground Resistance, autonomous choice from the influences of the majors. The increasing use of the usual samplers, were also born in principle to carry out other functions, that is, act as emulators of real sounds, along with the sequencer, allowing DJs to play in the studio than they normally have always done in real-time capture fragments, destrutturarli, rieditarli, play and edit, manipulating them from other bases, by relating them to other, breaking the rhythm, adjusting the beats per minute, putting everything in the right sequence. The perception of time in the conception of a piece will have the characteristic of different fragments sewn into something unusual, according to modules juxtaposed and repeated sounds appropriately.
The premises for the electronics became part of everyday scenarios, already there are all in the mid-nineties. Areas from other experiences, under the light of the turmoil produced by those sounds, they take new directions: I think the experimentation abstract hip hop, new formulas derived from jazz, I think the experience of the trip hop, the so-called intelligent techno, the new ambient , born, narcoticamente in rhythmic lines or in the atmosphere as antidotes to the faster speeds, I think especially the broken rhythms of the drum and bass, that interpreting in his own way, once again the tradition of hip hop, digitizes, everything speeds up and fragmented, in a compositional procedure borrowed from the same digital sampling techniques. But it's over, I could use the same time and more, just to mention the most recent genres, movements which are not always simple direct subsidiaries of what was there before: the big beat and the new wave chemicals, the garage English, breakbeat and breakstep, this just to stay within the scenes and rhythmic without touching the sides are most affected by conceptually sophisticated approaches or never completely dormant temptations of nature pop mainstream.

The transition from new machines to produce music to digital is these last few years, especially made possible by the continuous advances of information technology while previously the major limitation to express themselves in music, was precisely the lack of adequate technological equipment at affordable costs. The ever-increasing computing power of personal computers, the cost less prohibitive, if not simple, make it easier and available to a larger number of people with access to the joys of production. Many new music software, reduce, because of their design, the distance between professionals and home users, lowering the minimum technical knowledge to run them at the same time and enhancing instinct and knowledge of music. E 'in the case of Acid, a very intuitive software, which is used especially in a first phase of preparation of the tracks, or Reason. Every dj-producer according to aptitude and needs assembles its own set of tools-programs are increasingly focused on mutations and in tune with new technological developments. In fact, the musical, is the field of experimentation, along with that of the games, where you realize most hybridizations between bodies and machines in the normal act of daily practices. Everything will continue to have enormous influence on the music of the next few years, and not only on music. Look for new solutions, and that it is within the reach of many. I think we should hope so.