One of dubstep’s major draw cards for me has been it’s comprehensive internet presence. For a genre that’s only been around for, what? 5 years, it has many really well written blogs. The blogs give a newcomer like me an inside look at a scene that would generally be reserved for heads who have been around for a long time.

I’ve found Martin Clarke aka Blackdown (and his monthly Pitchfork article The Month in Grime/Dubstep) particularly interesting. The lastest post is a pretty good interview with Dizzie Rascal but what caught my attention was the question…

A lot of people have made the comparison between grime and baille funk and crunk coming through at the same time…

This stuff I’ve decided is the missing piece in my vision of what I’m dubbing “Shanty House.” Shanty House is the new strain of post World Music engaging in the same cultural and social dynamics that have given us Crunk and Grime in the first world and Dancehall in JA. Detractors might bemoan the need to give Favela Funk, Kwaito and Desi a brand name. However, like it or lump it these forms are always going to exist on the peripheries of most people in the west’s experience of music. If they aren’t called something specific then they’ll be less absorbable in their own right, and conversely will be viewed as an extension of World music. The concept of ‘World Music’ is inextricably intertwined with concepts of the natural, the earthen, and the rooted. However, the new wave of global urban music is mercilessly hooligan in it’s agenda, synthetic by choice and necessity, often produced in a crucible of urban existence yet more extreme, precarious and violent than that which characterises the temperature of New York, London, Berlin.

Funny that, I was thinking the same thing not too long ago. Dubstep / Grime and Kwaito have the same sort of energy, the same… I dunno, I can’t quite put my finger on it. Dubstep could really off back home, especially if the local mc got hold of it. The orginal post is dated June 2004 though. I’m definately taking my beats back home with me. So we’re starting to gather some momentum here :)