Can DJs put a political spin on things even if they want to?

By August Brown, Los Angeles Times

Oct. 6, 2012 12 AM PT

Last September, the DJ and electronica artist Adam Bravin (who performs as Adam 12) spun a set of hip-hop and soul at an Obama fundraising event at the House of Blues in West Hollywood. It was his second time DJ’ing a campaign event, and Obama’s staff wanted him to come backstage to meet the president.

But on the way to the receiving line, a guest spilled a cup of coffee all over his white clothes.

“The only extra shirt I had in my car was one for a friend’s drug charity that said, ‘The only coke I do is diet,’” Bravin recalled. Fortunately, he also had a jacket that buttoned over the text, and when the Secret Service whisked him off to meet the president, Obama had nothing but compliments on his set.

“He said, ‘Thanks for being my DJ,’ and it struck me that we have a president who gets it, who understands what a DJ actually does,” Bravin said.

Amid an explosion of DJ culture in America, that America has a hip-hop fan (the genre that invented turntable wizardry) in the White House is hugely appealing to many DJs and dance-music producers. Years after their craft found an audience at decadent festivals and high-rolling nightclubs, some DJs are joining with the Obama 2012 campaign and other activist causes.

But unlike rock and hip-hop cultures of past decades, today’s DJs have different obstacles when it comes to musical activism. Given EDM’s hard-partying culture, DJs worry that partisan stands might alienate escapist fans and compromise huge paychecks — especially when those checks come from mega-club owners in Las Vegas who are donating heavily to groups supporting Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

The question remains — if dance music is the new rock ‘n’ roll, is it even possible for DJs to effectively get political?

The origins of DJ culture and dance music are seeded with rebellion. Hip-hop artists from Public Enemy to NWA to Odd Future have challenged government, society and its structures. House, disco and techno were forged in black and gay subcultures in urban centers like Chicago and Detroit. The now-ubiquitous concept of “swag” — artists dressing and acting with peacocking confidence — came from the Harlem drag-scene “balls” in the ‘80s.

But in the late 2000s, dance music forged with pop and hip-hop to become a gyre of escapist, clubby fun. Most songs spun by mainstream DJs are paeans to the idea of living big, which for club owners means buying four-figure bottles of Champagne. DJ culture is now about facilitating a party, and no one wants to be lectured about politics on a rowdy dance floor. But much of that early, radical legacy has been lost on the younger and mainstream audience.

“One conversation DJs are having is ‘Where’s the punk? Where’s the rock and roll?’” Bravin said. “A lot of dance music today is about getting caught in the moment, ‘Tonight is gonna be the best night, the DJ’s making us fall in love.’ There’s no stance on anything, when there’s this huge energy and potential in the music.”

Some of them are beginning to challenge that, both on record and in their lives. A popular Web video, “DJs for Obama,” circulated over the summer, where in-demand performers like Bravin (who spun a set to close out the Democratic National Convention and at Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s New York fundraiser for the president), DJ Cassidy (who performed at the DNC festivities and Obama’s 50th birthday) and Dim Mak Records founder and Ultra Records artist Steve Aoki touted their affection for Obama and gave their imprimatur to his reelection campaign.

Kode9, the dubstep artist and owner of Hyperdub Records, wrote a book, “Sonic Warfare,” on how music and sound can be used as instruments of torture and warfare (as Britney Spears’ music was used in Guantanamo Bay in 2010). Longtime leftist activist Moby dedicated profits from a 2009 tour to the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence to combat California budget cuts affecting domestic violence shelters.

“When Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan talked about the drain of welfare moms on society, it was so obvious that neither of them had ever been to a women’s shelter,” Moby told The Times in 2009. “This was one time where people told them that yes, we are paying attention.”

Aoki is even taking it local, hosting a fundraising campaign for L.A. mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti, a Silver Lake resident who has long supported L.A. music scenes and redevelopment spurring artistically thriving neighborhoods. Aoki filmed a video for his single “The Kids Will Have Their Say” using footage from last year’s Occupy L.A. protests.

“Everyone’s got their own beliefs, but I’d say the [EDM] scene on the whole is pretty liberal,” Aoki said. Dance music’s values of acceptance and community support “mesh with what Obama’s been saying, and I can’t see any connection between my world and Mitt Romney.”

In Europe, where electronica has long held a central place in musical culture, some DJs have tangible memories of totalitarian governments and dance music as a form of rebellion. The trance DJ Paul van Dyk, born in communist East Germany, uses his international platform to support Rock the Vote initiatives in America and education reform in Germany.

“In my teens, when I got into dance music, I saw people get ‘disappeared’ by the government and there were huge restrictions about what you could listen to,” he said. “When the Berlin Wall came down, I saw that democracy was the best option, and after growing up in a dictatorship, it was important for me to be outspoken.”

But the music itself poses special challenges for speaking out. Dance music is largely instrumental, and unlike jazz or classical fans, mainstream dance fans aren’t reading too closely between the aesthetic lines to find political sentiments.

Some artists raised in the mid-aughts electro scene claim punkish connections — the French duo Justice addressed the Paris riots in its video for “Stress,” and Aoki is known to include “New Noise” from the radical-leftist hard-core band Refused in his sets. “I’ve always tried to be a bridge between EDM and punk,” Aoki said. “My lyrics are as clear as day — ‘You can’t be neutral on a moving train’ is straight from Howard Zinn.”

But even when there are lyrics, the music and the environment tends to steer producers toward big hooks about partying hard — a far step from the seething poetics of Bob Dylan or the fury of Crass and Minor Threat.

The challenge is to take the high but vague emotions of a rave or club night and translate them into something more concrete.

“People have to take that energy home,” Van Dyk said. “You can’t let it run into a vacuum.”

Yet even dance fans looking for a harmless good time might be inadvertently funding politicians with competing beliefs. Given the funnels of money flowing into Las Vegas dance clubs, fans’ money can filter back to Republican-leaning casino owners (and, of course, conservative EDM fans might also fund more liberal DJs).

Steve Wynn’s Encore and Wynn resorts are major hubs for EDM in Las Vegas and have hosted A-list DJ sets at their XS, Surrender, Tryst and Encore Beach Club venues. Wynn, a self-professed onetime Obama voter and donor to Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, is reportedly now a major donor to Karl Rove’s “super PAC” Crossroads GPS and has told Fox News that the Obama presidency “is doing more damage than is easy to assess at the moment.”

Wynn’s personal lobbyist Charlie Spies co-founded the Romney-supporting super PAC Restore Our Future, and Wynn’s corporate government affairs director, Mike Britt, worked for Rove during his tenure with President George W. Bush. Wynn attended Rove’s wedding in June and flew the couple to their Italian honeymoon on his private jet..

It’s almost impossible for a DJ to tour and record at a mainstream level — or for fans to see them in action — without dealing with large entertainment corporations. A CEO’s politics doesn’t necessarily affect a venue’s attitude toward music. But if big-money Vegas clubs are driving DJ and dance culture today, it does raise a question of how freely artists can speak politically while staying in their good graces.

“I don’t understand Las Vegas; it’s an ecosystem of vanity and elitism and money-sponging,” said Jason Bentley, the music director at KCRW-FM (89.9) and a longtime dance-music DJ. “It’s totally superficial and hijacks the experience of dance music. There’s no relevant message that can come out of that.”

For major artists playing those clubs, though, some see the money and culture of Las Vegas as an occupational hazard to be worked with, not necessarily avoided.

“It’s just part of touring; there are different types of parties, and I don’t think it’s necessarily bad for the music,” said Tim Bergling, the 23-year-old producer and DJ who performs as Avicii. “Even in Vegas super-clubs, there are 5,000 people there. It’s a mix of VIP and regular music fans.”

Dance music and DJ culture has always made its political impact implicitly — a come-as-you-are spirit at a great nightclub, a civil-rights-era soul vocal winding its way into a house remix. Maybe the recent rise of escapist EDM is a reaction to the hard reality of political change that confronted some young, hopeful Obama supporters.

Whether today’s DJs can effectively turn political might be the question that determines dance music’s future as a brief phase in American pop culture, or as the youth movement of our time.

“Kids want something to believe in. They’re crying out to participate in something,” Bravin said. “Pussy Riot is going to jail for their music. In 2008, kids were presented with something to believe in, and it’s gotten so easy to be distracted. But I feel like we’re on the verge of something that needs to happen.”

august.brown@latimes.com