#my mom likes 70’s-90’s disco & popular music

[a-bready-music-blog]

Both my parents have really generic music tastes whereas my brother likes rap, and I like heavy metal

[momentsinsong]

Moments In Song No. 027 - Hunter Hooligan

Music speaks to all of us, regardless of where we come from or what we’ve been through. Whether it be from 50 years ago, or today, music has the ability to liberate us from the mundanity of the world. Hunter has spent half their life learning about the special role music plays in our lives and used that understanding to propel their artistry forward. We talk to them about their deep dive into the history of music, the unconditional support of their Grandmother, and the importance of Pop.

Listen to Hunter’s playlist on Apple Music and Spotify. 

Words and photos by Julian.

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Julian: When I was listening to your playlist, I noticed that there were two very distinct halves to it. That first half is much more upbeat, dancy, techno almost, there’s some disco in there. Very much a four on the floor type of feel. And then that second half is very much more slowed down, and has that singer-songwriter/acoustic type of feel to it. Is that what you were going for when making your playlist?

Hunter: I love making playlists. I am that person who would make friends mix CDs and stuff like that. Every one would be so carefully curated. That’s why I was having such a hard time [Laughs]. Thinking about narrowing down my music taste into 10 songs, I was like, “Wow! This is big.” You know what I mean? I think there was a conscious effort to order songs a certain way. Even when I’m making my projects I am very conscious about the song placement, the tracklisting, I’m very very thoughtful and purposefully about it. I sent you one version of the playlist but I made like six versions that were totally different. It’s just because music is my life. I was trying to think of songs that were really important to me, songs that I loved my whole life, songs that are pretty new to me. I was just trying to find a balance of the songs that I like and also trying to make it make some semblance of sense. 

When you were making the different versions of your playlist, how do you know once you’ve made the final one? What was the deciding factor?

Even up until the night I sent it to you, there were like 15 songs on the playlist. I was like, “I can not believe I have to cut 5 of these songs!” I think every one of those songs is a doorway into my taste. Every single one of those songs is a good signifier of so many other songs that are similar to it that I like. 

So you’re saying like, this one acoustic Amy Whinehouse song is the entryway to a bunch of other singer-songwriter stuff you like. Or this Charli XCX is an entry way to more feel good poppy stuff you like. 

Yes, exactly. And so I think I kind of looked at it like a hallway with 10 doors and each door was to a room of infinite other amounts of music I love. I wanted to pick songs that were important to me, and songs that were special to me. Even the Charli XCX song which isn’t that old, and the FKA twigs song which also came out last year, they’re representative of so much more music I like, and what I like about music right now. 

Which is what?

What I really like about “Gone” is that it is so carefully crafted as a Pop song, as far as the production goes. And lyrically it has the structure of a Pop song, there’s verses, there’s a chorus. I love that it is a collaboration. I think collaboration is everything. What I love about that song in particular is that it’s so expected, production wise, as a Pop song but the lyrics are so bizarre. The chorus-- there’s something very impenetrable about the lyrics of the chorus. There’s something really so dissociative about the lyrics, but it’s still so catchy and so emotional. You feel it. Even though I have no idea what the song is talking about. I think there’s clues as to what they’re singing about, but I think it’s something you feel more. They almost sound to me like an A.I. wrote them. Like if you fed an A.I. a bunch of Pop songs and then it spit out a chorus to its own Pop song, that’s what it would sound like.

I always feel like Charli XCX has always straddled the line between, “I can sing the catchiest, poppiest hook you’ve ever heard” but on the flipside “I can take you down to some artsy, weirdo, off the wall type stuff.

And that’s what I love. I really love artists that straddle that line, for today. I love people who are versatile, who are brave, who are shapeshifters. People who are not afraid to be incredibly straight-forward and simple, but also thoughtful and crafted. I think it’s really cool.

I definitely agree with you on that. We’re definitely seeing a resurgence of female pop artists who fall into that lane. If you think about Lorde, or Billie Ellish, or Tinashe, they straddle that line. That’s what you like about the new songs, what about the old songs on your playlist? What are some of the songs on there that you’ve loved forever?

“I Feel Love” by Donna Summer, to me, is one of the best songs ever written. It’s one of the best dance records ever made. It’s brilliant. The production is incredible. The vocal is incredible. It all just hits you so right. To think that this song was produced in the 70’s is mind blowing. I listened to that song and I’m like, “This sounds futuristic now.” 

For me that song is a doorway into the music that surrounded me as a child. My parents had a really versatile taste in music and played a lot of stuff. My mom and I would do weekend Spring cleanings and she would load up the 6 CD stereo system and we would crank everything from Aretha Franklin, to Elton John, Aerosmith, Tupac, she loved everything. I think I inherited this excitement for music from her. 

She also loved 90’s dance music that was on the radio when I was little. She would go to club nights at The Depot and get mixes from DJs and play them in the car. Also when I was really young, my family is all in N.A., and at the time they would put on these dances as a way for people in recovery to go to a safe space that wasn’t a bar or rave where they might find alcohol or drugs and relapse, and enjoy the music. My family would take me, and I was like 7 or 8, and the music there was just… that the first time I heard “I Feel Love.” So much 90’s dance music that I love now was played at those dances.

How does you starting out at 7 and 8 going to these dance parties evolve into the taste of music you have now?

I started working in studios when I was 13, and that’s when I really decided that I was going to make music. 

When you say working, you mean in the actual studio?

Yeah early on I would bring in my songs, you know little things I would record. I would write with other people, I would ask to come and sit in on a session.

So this was a job you got or did you know someone in the studio?  

So I started taking voice lessons and through my voice teacher got connected to different producers and engineers. And in my mom’s previous life, she was married to the original owner of Hammerjacks, which is a legendary Baltimore nightclub, so she knew people from then who were musicians and who had their own studios and spaces like that. I kind of just really made it a point to be in those places. Around that time I also felt like I wanted to have an education in what American music had always been, and so I started really early on listening to the first records ever made, which were anthropological in nature. From there I became really in love with Blues. 

I wasn’t able to fit her on the playlist but she was there up until the very end, Bessie Smith. I mean this is someone who we’re talking about who was making music almost 100 years ago. I listened to her records and would sing them all the time. I feel like I learned so much about singing from her. She was so ahead of her time. From her ideas about her stage shows, to being a black queer woman, singing Blues in the segregated south, she was brilliant. She’s a forever artist to me. 

I had this idea of giving myself an education of what Pop music in America had been over time. Because Pop music is just whatever is popular. Through that I listened to Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, and then from there Eartha Kitt and Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Janis Joplin, Tina Turner, and I just kept following the times. Through that I heard so much music I had never heard before. I felt like music had this endless possibility of being anything.  

And this was all on your own? You just decided to do this one day?

[Laughs] Yeah this is just what I did. I didn’t have a lot of friends. You know it’s the whole “queer youth” storyline. Outcast, freak, bullied, blah blah blah. I would spend a lot of time by myself and music was my friend. I wanted to know everything about it.

So you’re building your background knowledge with this research, gaining access to this studio, then decide to make your own music. What was that process like?

When I was really little, I would take songs off the radio and write new lyrics to them. So it would be the same melodies and all of that, but I would just write my own song. When my parents divorced, there was a lot of change and chaos in my family and just in my life, and that’s when I started writing my own original songs. That was when I was 13. Then I would take the original songs that I wrote to my voice teacher and she would help me put chords to them and create these songs. A lot of times it would be me singing this melody to her, and she would fiddle around with the piano a little bit and then we would come up with a chord progression we liked and record them on a cassette tape. Once I had a couple of songs there that I really, really liked, she suggested that I record them in a studio. She worked things out with my family and for my birthday they bought me studio time.

That’s like the best gift ever!

I know! It was this amazing, brilliant thing. It was my grandmother. My grandmother always supported my music and me singing. I had a job really young, around 13, working at a snack bar. But it wasn’t enough for studio time. And honestly she paid for most of the studio time when I was young. She was a domestic worker. She would scrub people’s toilets and then turn around and give me $150 for a day in the studio. And that was never a question. 

What do you mean it was never a question?

She was never, ever like, “I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if this is worth it.” Never. The sacrifice she made for that was never lost on me. I knew, even then, what that meant. To have someone who is working so hard, literally barely making enough to survive, support you. I don’t think I realized, that young, how poor my family was. I did know we weren’t wealthy by any means, so the fact that she would do that is amazing. I’m never not going to make this worth it, for her. If I were doing it for me, I would’ve walked away a long time ago. This industry is terrible. It’s full of people who will steal, people who will cut you out and leave you in the dust.  I’ve lost a lot of skin in this game. The reason I do this is for my grandmother, my family, my ancestors. 

My family is Native and has really been through it, for a long time. We have nothing to show for it. Every person in my family has experienced intense trauma, and I have as well. If this was all about “Look at me! I’m so talented,” if this is what it was about for me-- hell no. I would be a happy real estate agent at this point. It’s about making all of this sacrifice and trauma my family has been through mean something, and putting it into art. Maybe one day I’ll be on a Grammy stage, and maybe one day I’ll be dead in a ditch. I don’t know. But I do know that my life is for my community. People like me. People who can relate. At the end of the day that’s what’s important to me. 

Do you take the history of your family and the sacrifices they’ve made, the vulnerabilities and emotions shared from the music you enjoy, and good old fashioned pop sensibility and incorporate all of those into the music you’re making now?

Definitely. For me, Pop music is about a feeling. There’s no pretext. You don’t have to know the story, you don’t have to know the language, you don’t have to know anything about it before you hear it. But when you hear that Pop song, you feel it. And that is universal. That’s why we see this huge rise in K-Pop. There’s not a parallel rise in people being able to speak Korean. People don’t always know what K-Pop stars are singing about but they feel it. Pop music is a feeling, a communication that transcends language barriers, time barriers, space barriers. That’s why Pop is what I’m aiming for. I want to connect. I want people to feel like there’s space for them in the music. 

The music that I’m making now is coming from a place that is newer for me to create from. It’s authentic to what I’m feeling now and where I feel like so many people are at in the world. There’s a lot of pain. There’s a lot of exhaustion, anxiety, depression. I want to make music that makes people feel like they’re powerful. Like my new song “Metal Me.”  To me that song is about personal power. Those sounds, that production, it feels powerful. I want people to feel like they can conquer their demons and fight everything against them. If I can make somebody feel powerful with a song, that’s it. 

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[profoundretrooldies]

Favorite Classics

Probably the funniest classics of I Love Lucy that a lot of people remember is Lucy and Ethel working at the chocolate factory. This episode was hilarious! This is another one of my favorite classics reruns that I grew up watching. This episode was in 1952 and the women wanted to see what it would be like working outside of the home. Lucy and Ethel learned how different things were and how fast pace the job that they were doing is.

Dick Van Dyke Show, in the 60′s had some really cool dance moves. 

Disco was really popular in the 70′s, especially dancing to the style of music.

Using gas stoves to cook was emphasized more back in the 70′s than cooking with electric stoves that people cook with more.

I am glad that there is a film on how nurses do their job. There is a shortage in nurses and they are needed. The 80′s showcased nurses that focused on taking care of the patient or patients who are sick and like children’s mom who take care of their children when they are sick and injured.

Internet has completely changed since the 90′s. http:// is outdated now when typing web addresses. https:// is what is used to type web addresses now. Blogger still uses http:// but in 2017 google chrome warned users that mixing http:// with https:// could cause the website to be insecure making the site not viewable to protect people who use blogger for their personal website from hackers and phishers trying to copy and share users information as their own. 

[blkwidowsweb]

Chicago Spotlight: A Conversation with Duane Powell

Duane Powell's love for music started an early age growing up in the 1970's being exposed to Chicago's rich soul music scene. His uncles were disc jockeys until the mid-80's and artists including Minnie Ripperton, The Emotions, Chaka Khan, Miki Howard, and The Staple Singers were their classmates and / or family friends. In 1985, Duane entered into the world of street promotions pounding the pavement promoting events for prominent DJs within Chicago's burgeoning house music scene starting with Lil Louis. In a five-year span, because of their Avante Garde style and presence, Duane and his crew became the go to individuals in marketing to get all of the "cool kids" to events. By 1990, Duane had done street promotions and served as marketing manager and consultant for many clubs and DJs including the historic Powerhouse. In 1998, he became an import buyer for Cargo Music Distribution and by the end of that year, an employer at one of Chicago's most legendary record stores, Dr. Wax Records. It was his 12 years there that the title of "tastemaker" really took shape by almost single-handedly breaking several artists in the market. This included Ledisi, Eric Roberson, Julie Dexter, Jill Scott, Raheem Devaughn, N'Dambi and many more.

As a promoter, he launched the SOUNDROTATION brand in 1999, further cultivating the underground soul scene in Chicago giving many of those acts their performance debuts in the market. Through this he became a fixture on the global soul scene and began speaking about his knowledge of the business on panels and workshops including The International Soul Summit (ATL), Urban Organic (Detroit), I Got Soul Conference (Dallas), Chicago Artist Resource and the Chicago Cultural Center.

As a DJ, he had a popular internet radio program on Swank Society. He has spun at and has residencies at many of the most popular venues around the city including the House of Blues, Virgin Hotel, The Promontory and Reggie's Music Club. In addition, he has opened for many heavyweights in soul music including opening for Frankie Beverly & Maze at The Taste Of Chicago and has shared the bill with many legendary DJ's and Grammy-winning producers in the dance music world including Joe Claussell, DJ Spinna, Steve "Silk" Hurley, Maurice Joshua, Josh Milan, Timmy Regisford, Ron Trent and more. Thousands of people are glued to his social media pages for his updates on music, as well as his knowledgeable tributes to the greats in music history. (Courtesy of duanepowell.com)

I had a chance to chat with Duane about his love of music and his appreciation of the culture of house music.

Black Widow:  What was your introduction to house music?

Duane Powell:   It’s weird because I came in the scene when it wasn’t called house music yet.  I knew the disco era because all of my uncles were DJs in the 70s but the moment I became active in the scene, dancing and joining dance groups, they were calling us Preppy.  This was around the time of the Hot Mix Five.  This was around 1982 or so.  You started hearing the word house music around 1985.  

Black Widow:  You mentioned having a lot of family members who were DJs. What was the music you grew up listening to? 

Duane Powell:  I had one uncle in particular who was a DJ. He loved funk music. So, every album cover they would have a big afro, or some big boots or some crazy costumes— he had it all. I remember seeing Led Zeppelin records and things of that nature. Of course, he was a huge Parliament Funkadelic fan but he also introduced me to the Grangers, Pleasure, the Whatnot’s and all kinds of underground groups. He was into it all.  My aunts were into the female soul singers and my grandparents loved the blues.   I grew up in a well-rounded musical atmosphere.  

Black Widow:   You don’t just play music or create and promote events, you are a music historian.  Did your upbringing influence your deep love of music?

Duane Powell:  Majorly! It’s funny because when I started doing the music lecture series, it was birthed from the fact that I would always post information about artists and people would always love it.  I definitely dig into the history more than your average person. I’ve always read liner notes and things like that. That came from having family members who were DJs, collectors and music heads. Between my mom’s siblings (it’s 14 of them); there were some who went to school with Chaka Kahn, and Minnie Rippleton.  My mom was really good friends with The Emotions They used to have card parties all the time.  I was always around that.  I was quite young so I didn’t know who they were persay but I was just in that atmosphere.

Black Widow:   What was your first party experience?

Duane Powell:   My 1st time going out was to a party at Mendel. That was in ’83.  That’s when I got my first taste of hearing something on a big system and being amongst your peers and people who liked to dance. I was such a shy kid and dancing was my release. Dancing was a space where people didn’t think I was weird.  I did Mendel parties for a couple years.  It’s so funny because I would come home all exhausted, sweaty and happy and I thought I was really doing something but my sister would get us home then go out to the real party! LOL She was headed to the Box (The Music Box).  When I first went to the Music Box, I was like WOW!  This was a whole different animal. I was actually too young to get in, but because of my sister and other influences, I was able to get in at times.  I wasn’t really with my peer group because everyone was older.

Black Widow:   You were telling me previously, you were in a dance crew and promoting before DJing came into play.

Duane Powell:   Those were the days!!!   Generation 2000 wasn’t just a dance crew, we were a lifestyle crew.   Everyone in the crew couldn’t dance but we were a visual for the culture. We were those lifestyle cats.  My 1st Lil Louis party at the Ascot hotel was when I started feeling more at home because I was with my peer group.  I loved the experience at the Music Box but I wasn’t as social.   Lil Louis parties were my introduction to working in the industry.  They would have us go to different high schools and pass out his flyers and such.  Our payment was just getting into the parties for free.  We would be able to walk pass people standing in line. It was our little prestige or VIP for the moment being able to walk pass people waiting in line and just walking in. [laughter] After that, I started working  at The Reactor nightclub in the early 90s. In ’98 is when I started dealing with the business as an import music buyer at Cargo Distribution. At the end of that year, I started at Dr. Wax.

Black Widow:  Now when you say lifestyle are you talking fashion, hair…the entire house culture?

Duane Powell:  Totally! We were the freaks to the outside world but in this setting we were superstars.   We were men wearing kilts, harem pants, high top fades and all kinds of things.  It’s so funny because now a lot of the things we were wearing back then are now “on trend”.  

Black Widow:  You came into this scene as a dancer. How does it influence you now as a DJ?

Duane Powell:  My favorite DJs outside your usual favorites like Ron (Hardy), Frankie (Knuckles) are the ones who were dancers first.  After Generation 2000 dissolved, Ron Trent, DJ Rush, myself and a few others were in a crew called “Mental Problems”.  All of my favorite DJs are dancers. Dancers feel the music in a way that DJs don’t and unfortunately when I look at a lot of DJs now, they don’t get it.   At some point DJing became more about celebrity.  DJs started to play for other DJs instead of the dancers.   It was made worse when the house music scene crumbled under Mayor Daley and we stopped having dance floors and actual spaces. The dancers got lost in the shuffle of all of that.  There are DJs who don’t know how to spin for dancers because they’ve never played for a dancing audience.  They play for listeners not for an audience that’s hollering,screaming and dancing.  That definitely played a role in my DJing. I avoided DJing for a very long time.

Black Widow:  Really? Why?

Duane Powell: I’ve been collecting music my entire life. I was the guy DJs would come to for music. I was a dancer and didn’t really want to DJ. I wanted to be on the dance floor. I definitely noticed how cutthroat the landscape of DJing was.  I didn’t want to be a part of that at all.  Ron Trent and Anthony Nicholson had a club called ESG on Broadway just south of Irving Park. They had this space in the late 90s. I met Anthony thru Ron Trent, they had me come down and DJ in the lounge room.  I was playing more acid jazz.  That was my first gig as a DJ.

Black Widow:  Did they have to talk you into it or convince you to do it?

Duane Powell:   Oh yea...they had to talk me into it.  A few friends of mine and I threw a day party in their space.  It was a Brazilian jazz themed party.  I was really into acid jazz and Brazilian rhythms at that time.   I met Anthony that night and we discovered we had similar musical tastes. He said I should come and play this music at his party. That was around 97.  The house scene then wasn’t prevalent at that time.  I had been on the scene at this point for so many years, I started to feel stagnant.  I felt out of touch and had forgotten what the feeling was.  Honestly, those who lived house culture never called themselves house. We were just music lovers, lovers of style and fashion. When people were calling us house initially it wasn’t an endearing word.  It was insinuating that you were gay or weird.   “Oh you one of those house MF’rs”.  It wasn’t a compliment. That wasn’t a title we embraced.  It put us in a box and we hated it. We didn’t listen to one style of music. That’s not what it was about. I really think, that’s what missing now. We forgot that what actually created house culture was a combination of so many different styles of music and genres.  It was Frankie’s disco era, The Chicago Soul music era, Herb Kent and our introduction to  alternative music, like The Police and Talking Heads, Italio music…it was all of those things and somehow we forgot about all of that.

Black Widow:    That’s so interesting. When I interviewed Terry Hunter, he spoke to me about how he hates the subcategorization of house music now.  What are your thoughts on the sub-genres of house music now?

Duane Powell:   Oh yea! It’s what’s keeping us lagging behind.  It’s keeping the world from really knowing what house culture is.  It allows other cities to stake claim to certain things and that’s not how this thing was formed.  Crystal waters was never considered a house artists, she was a dance artist.  Don’t get it twisted... House is a sound and a vibe. It wasn’t just a BPM.

Black Widow:  You speak about the culture quite a bit.  What is House Culture to you?

Duane Powell:    There are certain elements.   When we walked down the street, you knew who we were.  It was in our dress, our hair, it was a walk, a lingo and a language. We were ahead of the curve with style and fashion. It was a middle class invention that led poor people to middle class performance. We were wearing Willi Wear and things like that.  Your average person wasn’t wearing that.   We loved alternative groups and hanging out up north and going to Medusas. We had the motorcycle jackets, striped tights. We were the early club heads and it was very identifiable.   There were things that were unspoken too…like the way you walked into a space, the way you navigated the space, the way you honored the space. You knew how much space to give if dancers were in the circle.  It was an unspoken etiquette on the dance floor.  You could instantly tell the visitors or “house tourists” at your parties. Previous generations birthed the culture but my generation is the one that gave the culture its face.  Quite frankly, men took a lot of heat because of it too.   We were the targets of ridicule, a lot of homophobia and sometimes even violence. Some guys who weren’t part of this scene didn’t take to well to us.

Black Widow:  Interesting…How so?

Duane Powell:    It’s part of toxic hyper masculinity.  You know our culture was filled with beautiful, stylish women and men wanted to be with beautiful women. They garnered a lot of attention in their style and presentation.   So men would come to parties to holler at the ladies but may not have been lovers of the music.  The ladies weren’t there for that, they wanted to dance. That brought a lot of negativity towards men who were part of this scene. 

When hip hop culture started to live in Chicago, the house kids became the butt of their jokes.  We were called all kinds of names and sometimes men were the ones who became the targets.   We had to go through certain bad neighborhoods and projects to get to the parties and guys would get jumped and robbed.  House was perceived as middle class so we were perceived as having some money.  We looked different and stood out and it went against the grain of what perceived masculinity was. 

Black Widow:  That’s such an interesting observation about the scene at that time.   What was your vision when you created SOUNDROTATION?

Duane Powell:     SOUNDROTATION was the name of a weekly event DJ/Producer Anthony Nicholson, club owner Joe Bryl and I threw at the Funky Buddha Lounge in the late 90’s until 2001 and it stuck with me. Being that I love so many genres of soulful music, it refers to rotation of those genres and the interweaving. Under this title I created a CD compilation series, then an internet radio show, a blog and it became my identity.

At this point, the scene was stagnant. There weren’t clubs with house culture. We wanted it to be about music. I felt like it was missing Chicago. In other places like London and Germany there was this new culture of dance music and culture happening and it wasn’t hitting our market. We created that night because we wanted to bring that here.  I would read this magazine called “Straight No Chaser” and it was my music culture bible. It would showcase all these other markets and the music they were playing.  Chicago didn’t have a voice in any of this and we created this party to create that.

I knew there was a culture of music that was progressive and killer and we should be on it, but house heads at this point were still trying to re-live what wasn’t here anymore or you had those who were moving up north because the nothing was happening south of Roosevelt. Mayor Daley shut down everything to make way for tourism.  No more partying downtown, no more parties at the Bismark…etc.  They had zoning laws and things like that to block us from having clubs on the south side.  It’s so weird because they would always block clubs on the Southside citing the fact that it was in residential areas but Lincoln Park, Wicker Park and other neighborhoods had clubs in residential areas.

I wanted my events to be progressive because that’s how my ear was trained. All my favorite DJs were progressive. Ron Hardy didn’t play disco all night; he played alternative, jazz funk just everything. He left no stone unturned.  People forget Ron Hardy was playing new music!  He incorporated it into his flavor. That was my goal.  I’ve been called eclectic as a DJ and I’m not sure what that means…

Black Widow:  Well I do. I definitely call you eclectic because you play everything.  You don’t stick with one musical style or genre.  There are some who just play all disco, or all soulful or all afro…

Duane Powell:   OMG that is boring. I don’t like doing an event and hearing one tempo or one style all night. You can incorporate it all.  I know people who frown upon classics and I tell them don’t sleep on the power of a well-placed classic. Everything has its point in time and entry.  When you play for an audience, you have to remember the audience wants to feel like they are a part of it as well.   As much as you want to play what you want to, you can pull the crowd in with a dope classic. Then you have them, they trust you and you can now take them on the journey musically.  But if you exclude your audience…

Black Widow:   You lose them…sometimes permanently.

 Duane Powell:   Exactly.  Soundrotation is about the music, the evolution of music, and the give and take between where we are now vs where we were then.  That’s why there are so many things are associated with my brand. This culture has never been about one thing, you know?

Black Widow:  I definitely do.  What are your future plans and goals?

Duane Powell:  I haven’t figured out the travel thing just yet but I definitely want to travel more. I want to take my music lecture series to the next level. I’m excited about the buzz and attention it’s getting.  I believe that’s what’s going to stay with me thru old age. We have to keep our history alive.  We spend so much time bickering about our history instead of embracing our history.

Black Widow:  OMG! Yes…embracing, preserving, talking about it, documenting, writing it…I totally agree with you!

Duane Powell:  We are so busy trying to exclude people from it and try to tell people about being there and not begin there.  That’s a narrative that needs to change.  Who was there and making “there” being these same 3 or 4 places. The truth is, “there” was everywhere. Your experience entering in the house scene in 95 vs someone who entered in 85 are just as valid.  People always say I was there when Jesse did this or when Ron played that or when Louis was doing this…that doesn’t mean your experience was less valid. Let’s be real, Frankie’s history didn’t end when the Powerplant closed, he continued on.  We’ve all taken this on thru the 21st century.  This thing is still living and breathing. We are still taking about it now so I can’t say someone’s experience is not as valid…it’s your experience and it’s all part of the culture. House became a thing that was lived everywhere.  When we partied at our sock hops, it’ wasn’t R&B being played it was house music. I remember Andre Hatchett and Boo Williams were DJing our parties in high school.  Those experiences were just as valid as those who partied somewhere else.  It’s all part of our history and culture.

Black Widow:  That’s a perfect place to end our interview. Thank you so much for speaking with me today!

Duane Powell:  It was my pleasure. Thank you so much!

You can find Duane Powell on the following:

https://www.duanepowell.com/

https://www.facebook.com/djduanepowell/

https://twitter.com/soundrotation?lang=en

[pbcritpractspring17]

Assignment #1  Kurt Anderson: You Say You Want A Devolution?

In the article “You Say You Want a Devolution?”,  Kurt Anderson argues that Western culture has fallen into a pattern of recycling past trends.  He postulates that advances in technology in the past couple of decades have exhausted our capacity for newness and novelty in our world, causing people to fall back on a culture that remixes the old and comfortably familiar. I agree that current pop culture revolves around throwbacks and nostalgic reinventions of the past, especially in the areas of music and clothing, but that is not necessarily a death sentence for the evolution of pop culture in the future.

Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars released “Uptown Funk” in 2014 and enjoyed 14 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.  Yet, the song was distinctively old-sounding.  It pulled sounds from electro-funk of the early 80′s and featured primarily brass instruments; even the music video feels like it was filmed in a different decade, with Mars and his five-man posse strutting downtown in suits that make them resemble Boyz II Men to an almost suspicious degree.  The explosive success of “Uptown Funk”, which was based so heavily in culture of decades before us, is proof of our current obsession with the past.  The pop music landscape is full of songs that are permutations of earlier sounds.  Other examples include disco-influenced “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk, Walk the Moon’s 80’s rock-driven “Shut Up and Dance”, and Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”, which, in my opinion, is a shameless cover of Madonna’s “Express Yourself” with the lyrics pointlessly changed to convey the exact same message as the original song.  I believe that a partial reason for the resurgence of old sounds in new music is a new audience.  Young people, the main consumers of pop music, haven’t lived through music trends from decades ago, so for many of them retro-inspired pop music does feel new.  That’s why reinvented music from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s is running rampant while club music circa 2009 sounds incredibly outdated today.

Anderson makes the excellent point that jeans have remained the casual uniform of choice amongst the fashionable for quite some time.  Especially recently, mom jeans with a 90’s silhouette are becoming increasingly popular.  There are stores dedicated to curating vintage fashion, such as Tagpop, an online clothing store that specializes in clothing from the 90’s.  It is true that your typical citizen of the 90’s would not look out of place in 2017.  But I do believe that up until the past several years, what is fashionable has evolved.  The early and mid 00’s had a very distinctive look, with it’s exaggeratedly low-waisted bootcut jeans, strappy shoes, spaghetti strap tank tops, and uninhibited lip gloss.  Similarly, as the 00’s came to a close and the 10’s started, a very different silhouette emerged, defined largely by the tremendously popular skinny jeans.  Although they’re still jeans, the stretchy aspect made skinny jeans markedly different from any other denim based bottom before them, so I believe it can be argued that skinny jeans were an innovation in fashion.  Though current trends mirror those of the past, fashion has changed in the past 20 years- and then cycled back.

I don’t think that enjoyment of redundant pop culture is bad.  Although culture is about advancement as a society, it’s also about entertaining and making people happy, otherwise it wouldn’t be considered popular.  For this reason, as long as we are aware of the content we are consuming or the trends we are participating in, and the fact that at some point culture must morph into something new, “devolving” culture will not be a permanent symptom of society.  In fact, we should enjoy this period of nostalgic tribution while it last; who knows when the next new thing will whisk us into the future?