Insightful
essay
on dance music, the underground and corporate cultural
strip-mining, by Giles Bowkett:
Consider what
all forms of "rave" music have in common: illegal
sampling, illegal substances, and illegal parties in
illegal places. Dance music is fundamentally criminal
music, and this, ironically, is what protects it. The
corporate overlords of mainstream culture have created a
structure of copyright laws to centralize their own wealth
and power. This same structure makes it impossible for
them to use sampling as recklessly and creatively as
underground producers...
The inherent criminality of
the rave subculture puts it into a position similar to
that occupied by suppressed black musical subcultures
throughout this century, and in so doing allows it to
generate a similar degree of creativity and richness.