Mills says electro music now 'too middle class'
Techno pioneer Jeff Mills said Thursday that electronic music has become too 'middle class' and lost its political edge.The American DJ and record producer, who founded the hugely influential Detroit collective Underground Resistance, said 'bubblegum' pop has taken over the dance floors, airwaves and earphones of the world over.
'Music, especially dance music, used to be more political. The makeup of the people back in the 1970s and early 1980s was very mixed between gay and straight, people from everywhere, it was a melting pot.'
That 'made it easier to speak about certain ideas like violence, brutality and racism,' Mills insisted.'Now electronic music is primarily made by a certain type of people, typically middle class that probably have a pretty comfortable lifestyle.'
The more political concerns that Mills believes music should have now 'have been pushed aside at a time (when) there should be a voice.' The composer known as 'The Wizard' -- who is performing with a classical music orchestra at the Orange music festival in France Thursday -- said that 'dance music is pretty much predicated on the idea of escapism.
'People come to those parties because they want to shut themselves off for those few hours in the middle of the night and they don't want to think about the American president -- they don't want to think about people dying at the border with Mexico, they don't want to think about terrorism' or the situation in Sudan.
The 56-year-old, who has constantly reinvented himself since emerging from the deprived West Side of Detroit, was also key in bringing Detroit techno founders Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins to notice.
