Dancers win for Little 500

I am here to make an official endorsement, and I intend to emphasize the importance of my decision on our culture. I have spent many hours considering Feist and DMX, but in my dedication to local arts, I am declaring my support of Rad 5 as the place to be during the week of Little 500. While Feist and DMX are coming from far out of town to give us tight shows, the fact remains that they are only giving us one show apiece. Rad 5, for those of you who are uninformed, is a five-night dance party in various locations in Bloomington, lead by local DJs Flufftronix, Counts of Bounce, Ready T, Flosstradamus, Action Jackson, DJ Wushu, Totally Michael and DJ Pumpkin Patch. They outnumber the professional performers 4 to 1.\nThe reason for this endorsement is simple. In the globalized music world we have entered in the new millennium, the role of the composer in music has seemed to fade. Now I know there are producers and songwriters in many genres who are writing and arranging music to bring out the many facets instrumentation can carry through song, but there seems to be little composition in the classical sense: the aggrandized accompaniments, versatile orchestrations and attention to the musical sensation as a whole.\nWith the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s, attention shifted to harmony, instrumental balance and blues chord structures. This is not to say that rock ‘n’ roll is a negative development in music, as it is certain that its radicalism bred a plethora of musical genres we appreciate today. However, with rock ‘n’ roll, the instruments don’t battle the way manipulated sounds do in electronic dance music.\nDon’t get me wrong. Rock has had a large influence on dance and techno. But above the base of the music is the DJ organizing sound into structure that literally moves dancers into unstoppable grooves. And because of this trance – one that must have been similar to the trance of Mozart’s symphonies on Austrian royalty – I will be spending most of my time during Little 500 on the dance floor. I’m certain whoever goes to see Feist and/or DMX is sure to have an awesome time, but I won’t feel entranced unless I’m on the dance floor.