Kaskade Eloquently Puts Dance Music’s Naysayers in Place via Tumblr Post

Change is a funny thing. People aren’t really keen on the whole concept of change unless the process is quick and painless and leads to easily foreseeable positive effects. Maybe it’s because people have an inherent fear of the unknown or things they simply don’t understand. Maybe it’s because the status quo is comfortable and they don’t want to disturb some sort of societal homeostasis. Regardless of reason, people fight change tooth-and-nail every time. Even within the EDM community, change is a struggle. People argue over the direction some genres are taking and how the community is evolving in ways they may not like. Artists often spearhead these movements and lead the way for us to follow; Kaskade recently took to the internet to address the broad issue of how EDM is causing a permanent shift in music culture.

After an interviewer asked Kaskade how he felt about playing on the original 1969 Woodstock grounds for Mysterland, it got him thinking and lead to a series of tweets and a tumblr post called “Sex, Drugs + No Musical Merit“.

In this brief post, he addresses what Woordstock stands for today and it’s importance to our culture, but also mentions the resistance artists of that time received from “moral authority”. This resistance stemmed from youth and the work force moving towards a world of rampant sex, prolific drug abuse, and racial mixing. Aside from the whole issue on racial mixing, these issues should sound very familiar to you. Perhaps the most poignant assertion is the irony in how artists of the time were deemed as having little to no musical merit by the powers that be, and that those powers and moral authorities have been replaced by a rock culture which ridicules the musical abilities of electronic producers and DJs. Yeah, we’re looking at you Rolling Stone and Arcade Fire. Funny how the most vehement resistors are the ones that are slowly losing relevance and legitimacy.

This is as much about pushing EDM forward as it is just pushing music forward. I would go as far to say as this is about pushing global culture forward. There hasn’t been a dramatic movement like this since Woodstock, and the timing of this Mysteryland couldn’t be any better. Times are a’ changing, and we’re all a part of it. Kaskade is doing his best as an ambassador for this community and lifestyle (and we couldn’t be happier to have him as such an important figure head), showing the world that we’re more than rave-crazed kids looking for a party. We’re people with a voice and a love for music that’s beyond any force trying to hold us back; this voice is something that needs to be heard too, Kaskade can’t drive the ship alone. Who knows, maybe educating the masses on what it’s all about is all it will take? Give his original post a read (linked above), and feel free to take to the internet as well to let us know what you think.

Photo Credit: Elliott Brockelbank