New York City’s DIY underground is home to some of the most innovative artists around. Veterans and younger artists alike have risen to local notoriety without academic or institutional support, and have sustained communal ecosystems for creative expression in the city. Within the queer nightlife and electronic music scenes in particular is a not-insignificant number of musicians who have crossed over from the classical and new music world. Rather than completely abandoning their previous modes of creating, each has found a way to expand their performance practice to encapsulate the full range of their interests and goals.
Coming from a background in classical violin performance, I consistently found myself on the outskirts – always in search of ways to subvert conventions. Student recitals were monotonous: everyone played the same handful of concerti. It led me to seek out music by composers of marginalized identities across time periods, and later to submerge myself in the new music world, regularly working with living composers. I found myself being drawn further out – at dingy hardcore house shows, cerebral free improv nights, and freaky performance art showcases. A year ago, I was invited to my first renegade, an illegal outdoor party put together by a group of young DJs and electronic musicians with a generator, some speakers, and a table at an undisclosed location out in the desolate industrial area of Williamsburg.
As I have joined the brigade of Brooklyn DJs, my performance philosophy has remained unchanged. If given the chance to hold the attention of an audience, and to control the sonic and energetic fields of a space, I see it as an opportunity to give listeners unique experiences that defy expectations. While I generally play uptempo, high-energy sets (160bpm and above), my crate is entirely genrefluid. You might hear a frenetic Tanzanian singeli track supplemented with Rotterdam gabber kickdrums blending into Japanese polyrhythmic percussion. There’s a direct throughline between mixing on the decks and instrumental improvisation, concert programming, archival/memory preservation, and even orchestral conducting that all conceptually intermingle within my own practice.
My foray into Brooklyn and Ridgewood’s nightlife scenes was struck up by a deep connection with my creative partner, gg200bpm. gg and I perform as medium., an ambient-noise project that transmutes the tension and release of these raw DIY spaces into longform sets, situated between harsh noise walls and glacially-paced ambient drones. But when we perform back-to-back DJ sets, we go all out – frequently mixing well above 200bpm.
gg200bpm is a classically-trained vocalist and pianist. After graduating from Manhattan School of Music’s contemporary voice program, they found themselves lacking a community outside of academia that shared a sense of curiosity, and a desire to attend shows for the music itself. Everything clicked the first time they visited Bossa Nova Civic Club, the small but iconic techno venue owned by John Barclay on the Myrtle-Broadway strip in Bushwick.
Now, with several years of active participation in the nightlife scene under their belt – as a listener, dancer, DIY organizer, and hybrid DJ – they’ve witnessed how solo instrumentalists and DJs have similar responsibilities to their audiences, who are often grasping for connection, belonging, and (material) support. “The reason I go to shows is to process emotions from day-to-day life,” gg explained to me. “The energy that’s brought into the room with us when we enter a venue is the same regardless of genre. I feel humanity when sound is blasting the walls off a room. But I can do the same thing with Fauré.”
Classical/new music and hardcore techno both facilitate equivalent opportunities for gathering and catharsis among listeners, but gg feels that it’s inherently harder for classical music to connect with audiences. “Classical music and performers have to give people something to relate to because it’s usually much less accessible than just going to the club,” they explained.
While New York is home to its own diverse and vibrant electronic/dance music scene, many people are drawn to Berlin, where techno famously rose to prominence following the reunification of Germany. DJ, pianist, and composer Beef Lounge recently made the move to Berlin from LA, where he completed a doctoral degree in piano performance/composition at CalArts. Over Zoom, we recently discussed how adventurous musicians and audiences – regardless of genre – are always going to dive deeper down the rabbit hole to satisfy that curious itch.
Beef Lounge was driven to new music because “[it] hits all these offbeat emotions that no other music really touches on. It’s not just sadness or happiness. There’s music – like Caténaires by Elliot Carter, for example – that can express things like the overload of information and the hyperspeed at which things move.” The club music that Beef Lounge is now immersed in may not be derived from such heady concepts, but it still provides people with unique physical spaces for heavy feelings to be parsed.
Eric Umble, a clarinetist, DJ, and the founder of FACETIME parties, similarly finds resonance between the realms of classical and club. “Through both mediums, I’m interested in the ability to express myself as truly as possible,” he shared in our recent interview. In their DJ-ing, both gg and Umble deliberately consider orchestration, harmony, texture, and other concepts taught through classical training. “The proliferation of DJ-ing as a new common musical vernacular and practice makes me happy,” Umble says. “It’s a beautiful way to journal, archive, and share – You can DJ for or with friends at a club, or by yourself as a meditation or experiment. I see parallels to this communal and contemporary musicality in the free-improv and jazz communities, too.”
Music can provide a refuge to people who need it. Umble lacked the language to express the “incongruences” he felt growing up as a closeted queer child. “Music was always a practice of self-discovery and healing while being held in community,” he divulged. Beef Lounge also confided, “As a queer person of color, I needed to be around my people. Nightlife is where I feel the most free.” LGBTQ+ spaces and nightlife offer people safety to explore and express themselves, and are often at the forefront of political and social changes and organizing. According to Beef Lounge, these DIY and communally cared-for spaces are a demonstration of how “people are co-creating different ways of interacting and being.”
However, nightlife can only ever be an approximation of utopia. There are still power dynamics and hierarchies at play, and financial/social clout is often celebrated over the utility of building community. “You’re not escaping that – no matter what genre or field – when you make art within capitalism,” Beef Lounge warns. But for artists looking to proliferate their practice, DJ-ing and participation in nightlife can certainly open up opportunities for individual and communal growth. It can teach us to remain open to exploration, to have humility and respect for the artists and spaces who have built up the communities we’re in and around, and how to incorporate joy into our musical vernacular – especially for those of us who struggle(d) with breaking or coexisting with traditional conventions. gg reminds us, “You can always find something new. You’re only doing yourself a disservice by not seeking it out. Go to everything.”
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