'It's definitely a harder grind': Is electronic music becoming inaccessible to the working classes?

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  • We spoke to Loraine James, Pessimist, Rainy Miller and He Valencia about dwindling working-class participation in the scene.
  • 'It's definitely a harder grind': Is electronic music becoming inaccessible to the working classes? image
  • According to new research, working-class participation in the arts is on the decline. But what impact is this having on electronic music? The joint study from Edinburgh, Manchester and Sheffield universities found that the proportion of people from working-class backgrounds operating in the creative industries has more than halved since the 1970s–falling from 16.4 percent to just 7.9 percent. Many feel that electronic music, despite its roots in queer, Black and Latino inner-city communities, has also shifted towards middle-class homogeneity. DJ and social media commentator Aloiso Wilmoth, AKA He Valencia, believes factors like declining record sales and dwindling tour revenues–and how they've combined to make it more difficult for artists to make a living–have disproportionately affected those from working-class backgrounds. "These days you've gotta be able to do the whole media thing," he told Resident Advisor. "I feel like a lot of upper middle-class people have more money to throw parties and can pay more for stuff like PR. They can take the financial hit, whereas with working-class artists, the only thing we really have is our art. It's definitely a harder grind and most of us are looking for that 'it' moment that has the potential to pull us into visibility." Bristol DJ and producer Kristian Jabs, AKA Pessimist, echoes these sentiments, pointing to the widening gap between rich and poor as a direct obstacle for working-class people in electronic music. "If you're a young artist who happens to be from a less-privileged background then you're probably not gonna have the time to focus solely on your music because you'll be working full-time," he told RA. "Meanwhile there's a lot of mediocre talent about at the moment that has been propped up by financial backing, family support and the fact that these people have the time on their hands to fully commit themselves." Jabs, who recently took up work as a painter and decorator to make ends meet, portrays the Bristol scene as increasingly homogenised. "When I was coming up around 2010, it was night and day compared to what it's like now," he said. "Bristol has become such a divided city–both racially and by class–and the dance music scene massively reflects that." Jabs blames this division on "hyper-gentrification," insisting that, for the most part, dance music has been reduced to little more than a commodity for the city's large, predominantly affluent student population–therefore alienating those living outside the student bubble. Preston-born artist Rainy Miller acknowledges a similar disconnect between students and the local population in his hometown. But where Bristol is renowned for its vibrant music scene, the bigger issue faced by working-class people in towns like Preston is gaining access to culture at all. "Realistically, outside of the metropolises, I don't see much funding or much happening in these smaller satellite towns," he told RA. "These places–where the majority of ordinary, working-class people live–have become cultural vacuums. Accessibility wise, I think the most important thing is showing people the culture and getting them excited about it. People simply aren't being given the opportunity to explore these kinds of areas and a lot of the time they aren't even aware that it exists." Miller also highlighted the issue of fetishisation, describing how hyperlocal working-class subcultures are either ridiculed or ignored until they're eventually coopted by cultural gatekeepers and repackaged to the masses. "You look at clubs now, when you hear donk it's usually done ironically," he explained, making reference to the once-derided hard house sub-genre long detached from its small-town Lancashire roots. "People view it as a joke, but in reality it's one of the only things that has been able to ferment and grow in these places. It's now being sold back, almost like a commodity." Miller used the example of Bad Boy Chiller Crew, the Bradford collective–now signed to Sony subsidiary Relentless Records–who offer a humorous caricature of the bassline garage subculture that originated in their native Yorkshire. "It's obviously sold off as this gimmick," he said. "But there were lads doing that kind of thing all over the country ten years earlier. And back then it weren't a joke—it was what people grew up on." For Loraine James, who grew up on the Alma Estate in North London, imposter syndrome was the biggest obstacle as she tried to make a name for herself on the predominantly white, middle-class experimental music circuit. "I didn't think I'd ever be in the position that I'm in now, you just sort of do these things to fail," she told RA. "Even when I started bubbling up in 2018, I still felt like I was winging it. I had nothing to fall back on and was basically entering the unknown. You don't get a stable wage every month and I ain't from a rich background so it was a very scary thing." James referenced the cost of music equipment and the snobbery faced by artists who use a minimal setup as additional challenges. "Electronic artists who make a living from music tend to have thousands of pounds worth of gear at their disposal, which can be pretty intimidating," she said. "There's also a lot of judgement in the electronic world over how much or how little gear you have. Sometimes when I'm soundchecking, I bring two MIDI controllers with my laptop and the sound guy will look at me like 'is that it?' But I've always said it's what you do with it. Just work with what you can." While there have been conscientious efforts to tackle dance music's lack of diversity in recent years, Wilmoth believes the scene's over-reliance on diversity quotas–at least in their current form–has hindered any serious change. "Our understanding of representational politics is pretty hollow and surface level," he told RA. "When people talk about inclusion and identity, that should also include class. The conversation tends to stop at race, gender and sexuality, but people need to realise that all of these things are intertwined with class." He added: "For example, if you're putting three minorities on a lineup with one well-established, white headliner, nine times out of ten the headliner will be earning the most and the other artists are viewed as like parsley: sprinkled on top so the promoters can look good." Instead, Wilmoth wants to see a greater focus on policies that help minorities on a material level. He also advocates for greater transparency around artist fees and the financial apparatus required to gain a foothold in the scene. "A lot of stuff just isn't taught," he added. But what are the consequences of a scene that risks becoming an exclusive playground for the privileged? "Things will get very boring and formulaic," said Wilmoth. "You can kind of see it happening already. You go on TikTok and you're seeing techno artists that you'd associate with more underground clubs now playing alongside EDM acts at big festivals. In a class sense, people get rewarded for buying into this very homogenised industry thing and for adhering to a certain formula, and all end up sounding very similar. There needs to be more space for the actual futurism that dance music once portrayed itself as." Jabs, who according to his Twitter bio is "extremely bored of the current dance music scene," goes one further. "It's maybe a bit of an extreme statement, but I personally don't feel like there are any interesting grassroots movements coming out of dance music at the moment," he said. "The scene has become overrun with entitled people and it's stuck in a really boring place as a result of that." That said, James thinks aspiring working-class artists shouldn't give up hope. "I do think that electronic music is becoming more accessible," she said. "For example, every now and then you come across a huge hit that has been made by some 13-year-old bedroom producer. It's an improvement from when I was at school. But at the same time I don't think the government cares–they don't want working-class kids to have nice things." Photo: Ben Allan
RA