(dj Terry Thompson)

Why Baltimore House Music Is The New Dylan


"Some would call Baltimore house music mindless, but that is just another word for transcendent. It is high on its own invention. It juggles the desire for self-expression inherent in going public with the just-as-strong desire to spit in your face. That the personal as political is wound tightly around a sound that, though having obvious roots in the past, remains a monster wholly unto itself. Within that sound resides the unspoken but palpable belief that there is redemption only through more music and more nights (this is what Baltimore house music and Bob Dylan mean to me.) It exists right now with an aesthetic, language, and set of rules that work as long as everyone agrees that it works, and when it does not work anymore, it will become something else. Making history does not seem to be the point. Making people move seemed to be the only point, but on the way to that something weird and wild happened. The scene became a universe unto itself. To paraphrase "the bard": They've got everything they need, they're artists, and they don't look back. Some would call it noise and they would have a point because it is noisy as hell. But sometimes the sound of people throwing a party to impress their neighbors and wake the dead is one of the only ways that we are reminded that we have neighbors and that we are not, in fact, dead."