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pirateborrow some from libgen or Anna’s Archive - For those of us who are more of a verbal learner, check out the Channel Socialism 4 All (the link is Yewtu.be, so no worries on the privacy)
So I was re-reading the German Ideology by Marx recently and I found his bit about ‘Mental Production’ really relevant in regards to Drill music in the UK.
So if you take what Marx is saying, that the mental production (art) of a society is controlled by the upper class, and those who lack the means to engage in mental production will be dominated by it. He gives the example that you just need to read history to realize this is true, as the only art that gets filtered through history and that gets to survive and be representative is what the upper class allowed to be uncensored, and what the upper class deemed valuable enough to fund with money both in purchasing, artists expenses and education.
In a modern context in the UK over 900 drill artists have been entirely banned from making music; 80% of them where never implicated in any crime what so ever, and 92% are black; the idea that drill music is an inherently violent genre of music that increases crime is a moral panic. Think about mods vs rockers, or satanic panic with metal etc; the only new element to the moral panic around drill is that it is now also racialized; it represents a sub-culture of defiance and is a truely bottom up from the underclass genre of music and as such it needs to be comidified, neuterued and the real pioneers of the genre stopped from making music so that the representation of what ‘drill’ even is can be whitewashed in history by the mainstream.
the only art that gets filtered through history and that gets to survive and be representative is what the upper class allowed to be uncensored,
This is why I love the preserved graffiti in the ruins of Pompeii. They share a relatability with cave paintings that other historical art lacks.
I didn’t know about this. Looking into it, turns out police literally cited music videos as the cause behind violent attacks, a theory that was unsurprisingly supported by an ultra conservative think tank. London having a normal one. Do you have a link to any such music?
So my main source on this was this book I read recently;
They talk about the origin of drill music in the UK as being linked to these tracks, so here you go;
They mention that think tank in the book, they also talk about how this attempt to associate black music with violent stereotypes is hardly anything new, its been going on to grime artists prior to this, I suppose the new thing about it is that drill artist get banned from even entering certain postcodes and given 4-5 year prison sentances for not comitting a crime, but refrencing a already convicted murder they where just aware of as it had been publicized in the news. Its clearly not about just censoring supposed violent music but about removing voices from the victims of austeirty.
It’s part of the long history of the UK simultaneously ripping off black and Caribbean artists while disparaging them, it happened with Reggae, Ska, Jungle, Grime, Dubstep, Road rap, and now Drill. Drill is unique imo in that artists are not shy to talk about being a product of their environment, as decades of austerity and neoliberalism have led to increased poverty.
