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Azucar5

Co-written by DJs Ushka and Ripley.

When we talk about “global bass” as a genre and scene in New York, it’s not always clear what fits into this recently generated category. Who gets to claim “global bass” and what does it represent? This desire to cookie-cutter a range of musical genres as a way to identify a “scene” has in its doing led to the lack of inclusion, in media accounts, of many communities who are engaging with global music and culture in meaningful ways, with amazing music.

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In this guest post, DA friend Jez Smadja shares with us thoughts & context on Passinho, a hypnotic new dance style that is contouring the complicated culture of the Rio’s baile funk scene, suggesting alternatives to the cartel-ization of funk, sidestepping standard dancefloor machismo, and (hopefully) challenging the gentrification of Rio, one of the most expensive and most touristed cities of Latin America. Enjoy!

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(Thanu and longtime Dutty Artz collaborator, DJ Ripley (Larisa Mann) are Detroit bound)

This week, we’re in Detroit for the Allied Media Conference, a networking conference for youth organizations, organizers/activists, technologists, educators, media reform advocates, alternative economists, musicians, DJs, artists, and others who come together to develop new ideas and expand upon the relationships between media and justice, and explore community approaches to social change.

There’s been a slew of discussions bubbling up online and off that involve politics, music and nightlife. It’s funny to us that these discussions often start with the assumption that politics and nightlife are different, because we have never experienced those worlds as separate, and neither do most of the communities we care about and live with. So we decided to start here from the assumption that there are already politics on the dancefloor and the questions is – how do we deal with it?

We wanted to share and start conversations around work that is meaningful to us as deejays, event planners, and organizers by discussing the relationship between activism and music– and how to explore dancefloors as sites of and for activism. What are the possibilities of challenging dominant social orders through the creation of dance space? How are certain spaces (gay ballrooms, queer dance parties, Jamaican street dances, for example) sites of resistance and how are they simultaneously valued, idealized & misused by those inside of those subcultures?

If you’re around the AMC these next few days, stop by our session on Friday at 4pm.

Here’s a short blurb (for a more thorough descript click here):

Radical Organizing from the Dancefloor

“You’re an activist? But you party so much!” Political activism and dancefloors – the languages don’t always overlap, neither do the people – but nightlife is key to survival and sanity for many marginalized communities. We will come up with tools to discuss nightlife with activists, the impact that cultural spaces can have, and how to embody activism on the dancefloor. Come share your favorite stories of political pleasure, failure or success on the dancefloor, and we will strategize responses to them, and other scenarios we have encountered as DJs and event planners. Location: Hilberry A (Student Center)

PRESENTERS: Larisa Mann (DJ Ripley), Surya Dub; Thanu Yakupitiyage, iBomba, Dutty Artz | #AMC2012 #raddances

You can check out all conference workshops in the program here.

We’ll keep you up to date from AMC, so stay tuned for more! You can also follow us on twitter – @laripley and @ty_ushka. Dutty Artz crew member, @TAL1ES1N is also at AMC, so follow him too.