WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/westminsterresearch Darkcore: Dub’s Dark Legacy in Drum ‘n’ Bass Culture Christodoulou, C. This is a copy of an article published in the Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, 7 (2), 2015. The final definitive version is available online at: https://dx.doi.org/10.12801/1947-5403.2015.07.02.12 © 2015 The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: ((http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail
[email protected] Darkcore: dub’s dark legacy in drum ‘n’ bass culture Chris Christodoulou, London South Bank University, London The popular use of the terms “dark” and “darkness” in bass-oriented electronic dance music (EDM) styles, such as grime, dubstep and jungle/drum ‘n’ bass, points to the recontextualisation of the racial category of blackness on the one hand and the dark uncanniness of post-industrial urban space on the other. Acknowledging the influence of dub on a continuum of bass-oriented EDM styles in the UK, I focus on drum ‘n’ bass to show how “dark” discourses within the dub diaspora can be defined as a critical response, firstly, to the ethnocentric demonisation of blackness as the post-colonial Other of modernity, and secondly, to the destructive conditions created by the political economy of the contemporary city where rapidly changing relationships between class, gender and technology determine access to wealth and social prosperity1.