MTV Hive: Up until the 21st century, the geography of American dance music was fairly centralized: New York City was the birthplace of disco via David Mancuso, Nicky Siano and Larry Levan; Chicago could claim acid and house music due to the sets of icons like Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles; the Belleville Three in Detroit (Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins plus Carl Craig) invented techno. And while at the height of disco fever in the late ‘70s nearly every major U.S. metropolis could boast a healthy dance music scene, as the ‘80s wore on, such local scenes shriveled up altogether. And even when the first wave of electronica hit American shores in the ‘90s with its attendant hype, it was mostly via imported music from London and Berlin.
3 comments:
when I was checking out colleges last year I wanted to find out if there was really a life off campus to hang out, but also to work in. I was told by multiple sources that Pittsburgh had a very up and coming music scene going on. I think it is so cool that where there are a lot of students there is a real sense of Pittsburgh culture in the music. Boston is the largest college town, it is no wonder why they have a growing music scene.
I always hear about people going to concerts to listen to techno and house music.
I am absolutely thrilled to have discovered Pittsburgh Track Authority via this link. Thank you Green Page. I have been a follower of the latest artists in electronic music, especially the independent producers. I will be looking into where and when Pittsburgh Track Authority is performing or releasing music. I applaud their choice to produce traditional house dance music with funk & jazz roots as opposed to the recent (within the past year) surge in tech house & progressive house genres, especially featuring mainstream artists such as Avicii, David Guetta, and the like. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just good to see local people making some quality original EDM.
So I looked up PTA and they are about the most chill house music I have ever heard. Granted house is a lot less intense then say dub step but PTA's version of house is very different then what I have heard people in other places call house. But I guess this just speaks to the power of local people creating their own unique brands of things. Pittsburgh and I'm assuming other area's like it have a bit of a youth presence, creating indie and diy things but it is not at the center of the culture here like it is in other places such as Brooklyn or Seattle. Creative young people that operate on an underground level or grassroots level are what I believe to be where culture comes from. Because those people are so connected to what youth culture wants and thinks is cool they are the ones that will be able to give it to us first and in it's most pure state. The real shame about Pittsburgh is that the young people that are here creating these new things and breeding culture leave after they finish collage or get out of high school. Pittsburgh is not exactly the epicenter of cool and so people who are "cool minded" want to leave to to move to somewhere like Seattle or New York, which in turn just jacks up the prices of those places and makes them less cool, more gentrified, and less available for people who actually want to make underground art.
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