Just had to leave an event dubbed “Temple Night” at the trendy organic vegan restaurant Zest in Ubud, Bali tonight, bludgeoned by the deadening relentless repetitive bass beats of the DJ, a celebrated star from Berlin. The mostly Millennial crowd mingled halfhearted in front of the maestro, while my Boomer partner and I sought refuge behind the speakers, earplugs firmly in place to no avail.
Okay, so I own the bias; I sound just like my parents who bemoaned the advent of rock music, or my earlier psychedelic self who suffered later waves of heavy metal, disco, punk, rave, and on into the electronic music scene which has essentially taken over popular music. There are few live club acts anymore, with every scene the same onslaught of high decibels, low frequency, and alcohol or equivalent drugs lulling the body into motion with the “music.” Even live acts have been electronicized, so the solo performer can collect the meager pay for the night’s performance, supported by backup tracks on handy digital looper operated by foot pedal needing no hotel bed, transport or meals, or share of the bar take.
I remember the phrase “The medium is the message”; and if that’s still the case, the message is that we’re being swallowed by the machine. The Millennials especially — not to pick on them because it’s probably not their fault — appear, as a mass, susceptible to numbing from the inescapable bass waves on one hand, and the twittering ubiquity of their handheld screen distractions on the other. Wouldn’t you?
I admit, my generation has allowed the world to lapse this way… acquiescent or powerless, resigned or still oblivious despite all evidence to the contrary, as if willingly hoodwinked by fake news and narratives of comforting or fearful illusions (paralyzing in either case), productive of an inertia whether by design or neglect — no doubt a combination of both.
What would I prefer? If we follow the premise of the attraction to live organic food, why not continue to an evening of live organic music? Maybe that’s a throwback to the country hoedown, or the hippie campfire, which also gets boring fast in a more folksy kind of way. So I suppose what I hanker for, here in the international club/festival scene, is the African village, where they still do the dances for everyone to join; where the bass beats are dispersed in an artful way for a pleasing dynamic that doesn’t keep landing on all four downbeats of every bar, hour after hour. Young people are attracted in smaller numbers still to this style of alternative culture, in other locales that favor natural beauty — Maui, Hawaii; San Marcos, Guatemala; Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. Maybe instead of bitching about the kind of cultural trend I don’t like, I should get myself over to the kirtan across the road; the open mic jam across town; the drum circle next week.
Still, I feel for those who come to these more popularized, more pricey venues with the louder music and the glitzier festival posters and websites, the perks of the aerial silks and the live painting, artful in their own right. They didn’t look all that happy either, standing like shuffling zombies in front of the minor DJ god, or sipping fancy drinks off to the side, where it was still too loud to converse with their friends. En masse, young and old, we succumb to the siren call of the machine, the trend to auditory torture, like slow boiling frogs too blind in the soup of our growing, seemingly voluntary cultural oppression. There is still, I am blessed to confess, a choice.
While attendance is fluid, the usual mix is drum kit, bass, electric guitars, keyboard, mandolin, congas/djembe and percussion, and vocals. Musical genres range the gamut: ballads, Celtic, reggae, blues, prog rock, acid jazz, funk, hard rock, dance groove… with nothing prearranged, and everything played strictly in the moment. If there is any unwritten rule we abide by, it’s probably, “No cover tunes.” In other words, we’re constitutionally averse to what Frank Zappa lampooned as “strictly commercial.”
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