They say dub is about making space.
That is why it is music for the city, where space has always been missing.
It’s getting more difficult to find somewhere to live. Rents are going up. New spaces are needed.
Dub music, in one form or other, is necessary. This was the conclusion that came to me some years ago, riding the train through the center of Amsterdam with Lee Perry in the headphones. With time it has become clearer and clearer. The effects, echoes and repetitions fit this landscape perfectly. Here is also the need to meditate on the emptiness and the nothingness, which connects to our strong feelings for open spaces; rooftops, parking places, abandoned lots and closed down industrial areas.
Dub music is tradition. The visionary tradition. The tradition of community making, of a social movement. But a tradition needs growth to stay strong. It needs innovators.
Dub Music as expressed by artists such as Maurizio, Safety Scissors, Luke Hess, Christian Bloch, Vladislav Delay and Markus Fürstenberg seems to be designed specifically for the present urban situation to a high degree. Unlike the melancholic expressiveness of alternative rock, rap music’s dreams of private profits, and reggae music’s longing for a rural situation, it can bring a whole new light to a day of grey asphalt and grey buildings.
This music shows the world beyond the despair and dread of our times. It opens up space. For escape and resistance. For possiblities of community. For a coming generation. For the birth of new life.
