If I Were A Real Writer, I'd Be Into Leonard Cohen...
... but I prefer music that sounds like two bin lids being bashed together.
At the SpeakEasy poetry nights I help organise, we ask our guest poets and writers what they’d like. And it’s pretty much all been trad, folk, trad, folk, trad folk. The next poetry night will feature a ‘fiddle with folk leanings.’ I don’t know what that means.
I’m dying for one of the writers to ask for electronica. It did happen once, and we ended up with three cool rappers who performed for an audience old enough to be their parents and grandparents. It was mighty crack.
Now if I were a real writer, I’d be delighting to the sound of the pipe or fiddle. Or citing my debt to Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan or David Bowie as influences. It’s pretty rare for a literary evening to pass without greats of that ilk mentioned.
I keep waiting for someone to namecheck Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, or better yet, Silver Apples, those great pioneers of electro. But it’s not likely to happen.
Photo Description: This is a poster for our SpeakEasy event which featured a rapper called O Syn and his two friends. It contains details about the event, and there are graphics of two microphones on it.
Electronic music isn’t considered to be real music because it isn’t produced with traditional instruments and doesn’t follow traditional melodic patterns. Or even any discernible musical pattern at all.
But that’s exactly what I love about it.
I have loved electronic music for almost all my adult life. Electropop, ambient music, music that straddles the line where electro and dance music meet. Music that’s almost classical in its construction. Music with lots of bleats and beeps.
Electronic music has a reputation for being sterile, or a bit ‘notionsy.’ But it’s like any music – there are good and bad examples of any genre. But the best electronic music takes me to another place.
And electronic music fuels my writing. I fill my ears with ambient beats as I write, to shut up the noisy parts of my brain.
And when I listen to electronic music on the bus, I let it take to places of towering cliffs and tumbling waters, or city streets at dawn, slick with moisture.
Some people want meaningful lyrics for their music, or melodies that slip down easily. I want soundscapes and beats. Music that pushes the boundaries of sound. Music that challenges my ears and then rewards them over and over again.
Most electronic music isn’t produced by household names. And yes, a lot of it is produced on computers. But it’s still produced with skill.
Electronic musicians and music producers carefully calibrate beats, source unusual sounds and build up the layers of sound to create one unified, unique sound.
I can feel an ode to Kraftwerk coming on. Think I’ll inflict it on the audience at the next SpeakEasy.
If you want to share your love of electronic music, or to rant about it, you can message me on derbhile@writewords.ie.