A Footnote – on clubbing

When I say I went clubbing, I suppose it wasn’t the real thing! Across the No6 site after 11pm,  4 or five stages were transformed into dance venues with loud music, DJs, lights and lots and lots of people on the (muddy) dance floors. Having avoided clubs until this point in my life, I felt I should experience something of this phenomenon in the relative safety of a festival setting. As I have repeatedly said in this blog – why not!

Club DJs have enormous kudos and status. Here is a whole popular cultural life to be explored and reflected upon – I only spent a couple of hours engaging with it so this could be the subject of a whole new piece of work (probably not by me!)

So based on my limited experience here are a few reflections some of which borrow from Marsh and Roberts ‘Dominant Themes’ (see earlier blog: On the importance of listening)

First, a comment about the characteristics of the music. Drum and bass of course feature heavily with electronic melodies; the beat is attractive, maybe hypnotic because it quickly draws people in whether lithe young clubbers or portly middle age observers; it’s almost impossible to keep still when the music plays. Lyrics are minimal with occasional (oft repeated) samples or phrases from a collaborating vocalist (collaboration is a BIG thing). The crowd don’t do much joining in with the songs as in a pop gig, but there are some phrases that are sung out loud every now and then.

Clean Bandit (you know them don’t you?) send up the repetitiveness of house/club/techno music brilliantly in their song ‘Mozart’s House’ in which Wolfgang Amadeus’s String Quartet No 21 is cleverly counterpointed with strong drum and bass techno samples and lyrics which incorporate some classical musical terminology. The song opens:

So you think electronic music is boring?
You think it's stupid?
You think it's repetitive?
Well, it is repetitive!

I don't know, skip a beat! (We use special tricks with the computer)

And it’s loud! The lights are as important as the music and the presence of a DJ is clearly significant

Now to Marsh and Roberts;

Transcendence: There’s a real sense of clubbers being drawn out of themselves, moving in unity with one another and the music. Again I turn to Clean Bandit for a commentary:

When I walk into the club and my feet start to rub
Everybody thinks I'm weird but the truth is I'm not
When I'm in the studio and the 808* pops
Everybody thinks I'm weird but the truth is I'm not
Gonna let the music take control of me and let the bass rush through me
808* pace to make, I love the state I'm in, it's mind blowing
All the feelings that I'm feeling, loving everyone it's amazing
I want to stop until I drop I know I'm on top and now it's time to bop
(Cologne)

* I’m reliably informed (by Wikipedia) that The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer (a.k.a. the "808") was one of the first programmable drum machines. Introduced by the Roland Corporation in the early 1980s, it was originally manufactured for use as a tool for studio musicians to create demos.

Embodiment. A pulsating closeness of bodies on the dancefloor. We are reminded that our faith is one that is centred on en-fleshment!

Connectedness. A degree of mutuality in dancing together but it’s also quite permissible to dance solo. At the floating dance floor, strict crowd control limited the number of people dancing at any one time but when a new cohort joined in they were invited to enter through an impromptu arch of raised arms to enthusiastic  whooping and applause.

Ritual. Certain hand gestures and moves are associated with particular beats, samples and DJ intros. An unpublished code for those on the inside?

I would add:

Stimulation or perhaps stimulants.  Plenty of alcohol certainly and an inescapable sexual undercurrent in moves and the beat. Possibly some chemicals too? Less easy to connect this one with Christian worship but not impossible - think about incense and the contents of communion?!

Identity I guess the clubbing outfits were more muted than in a regular setting but there were certainly some extravagant costumes; face paint and masks helped to conceal individual identity and the darkness/light changes did the rest.  To some extent it was apparent that festival-goers value the opportunity to escape from their regular identities for a weekend or two; clubbers perhaps do this more frequently. Yet they take on a new identity which has a degree of uniformity about it

.  Of course this was here set in ‘The Village’ where No6’s attempts to establish his true identity framed much of the festival.

So here are some resonances for those of us who strive seek transcendence, embodiment etc in worship and connection with the Other. I’ll need to think differently about those clubbers that I met so many weeks ago with the Street Pastors!