2007-05-22 History of Electronic Music

I just finished the reading Modulations, une histoire de la musique électronique (a translation of the English version A History of Electronic Music: Throbbing Words on Sound. The book itself is interesting and show the patchwork of the electronic music and its foundation. The book is written in a collaborative way as each chapter is written by a different author. Thinking back of the still young electronic movement, it's difficult to draw any conclusion as we are still in the dynamic and we will continue to be in. The book remembers me the freedom in electronic music and the going forward approach. It was maybe the first contact for me of a real social network where people share different musical approaches, different way to listen or to enjoy the music, to mix it or (re)create it. In the book, there is a nice quote of Bill Laswell, here is the French version of the quote (I'm looking for the original one) :

Nous n'allons pas découvrir un son totalement nouveau, une note parfaitement inconnue auparavant, ni rien de semblable. La découverte se fait en combinant des éléments; deux éléments réunis en font un troisième, et tous ces éléments différents concourent à la création de quelque chose de nouveau. Je pense que la seule façon de parvenir à quelque chose d'un tant soit peu différent est de se mettre dès à présent à combiner les choses entre elles.

That's a clear explanation of the creation process where you need the existing elements to build new and unknown elements. Unknown elements require part of the existing elements from our world. Innovation in electronic music is a matter of sharing, mixing, combining those known elements in something new. It's part of the creative process and building new boundaries to avoid the combination of the existing is dangerous for creativity and innovation. I just remember those days where we were all together sharing intense moment while just listening to monotonous beats.

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