Sweat Records co-owner and Get Low founder Jsin Jimenez delivers part two of his epic rebuttal in defense of Miami’s music culture.
See: PART 1
Moombahton may be awesome, but it couldn’t have blown up in the beginning of 2009 as it had not been created yet. While Moombahton wasn’t ready then, Dubstep certainly was. The earliest Dubstep tracks were created in London in 1998, and they were getting play in Miami as early as 2001 at Beat Camp by trailblazers like T.S. Heritage.
The new genre steadily gained underground momentum thanks to cutting edge DJs like Gooddroid, and found a home at Juan BassHead’s Laundry Bar. There’s some great history of WMC Dubstep here, including a recap of the epic 2009 season that inspired the people from (((SHAKE))) and BassHead Music to start GET LOW, the monthly bass event at The Vagabond that June. GET LOW brought the Miami Dubstep movement to the bigger stage that it deserved, pushing the city’s bass music boundaries, and being named “Best Monthly Party” by the New Times. This is where Moombahton and Dubstep would be getting played together in Miami; showing that there was never a “musical food war” between them as claimed by the original article.
The example of mid-range “wobble bass” Dubstep referred to in the article is commonly called “Brostep.” This is the style that’s seeped into pop culture and become most popular with the American masses and many of our producers. There’s also plenty of old school Dubstep heads who have been completely opposed to the influx of the wobble, and those in the middle who accept that everything can have a time and place. We got to see it all grow just like the other variants of the genre, and it became a part of our musical tapestry. Take a listen to Dubstep with more substance and sub bass such as Silkie, Joker, Truth, Kromestar, Skream, and Mala before lumping it all together and trashing the entire genre.
Rather than “Blame the Brits,” we honor them for bringing bass music to the next level. When John Peel started played dubstep on BBC Radio 1 back in 2003 he was definitely was not “spamming the airwaves,” and neither was Mary Anne Hobbs with her groundbreaking show “Dubstep Warz” in 2006. When The Vagabond was graced with her presence a few months back, you bet she played the genre in question right alongside Future Garage and UK Funky.
Last year, the UK Sun came out with this article, showing excitement for their underground music’s progress in the US. They continue to show love with our own Juan BassHead being invited back to play the legendary London club Fabric for the second time this year on August 5th with Dubstep greats Hatcha and N-Type. This is cultural relevance on a global scale for someone who couldn’t be more Miami.
The fear-mongering and corny imagery worked to make the city into a bad zombie movie, and I love those. But in reality, Miami’s music culture is nowhere near a post-apocalyptic state. It’s currently blossoming with young artists like Animal Krackerz, Gray Ghost, Adames, ARK IX, Lofty, Bats, Nikolais Javan, Chalk, and many more producing all kinds of bass music. There’s more danger to our culture from a blog’s hateful rhetoric seeping into the minds of other uninformed people, just like bad Dubstep can seep into the mind of a writer. No need to worry about us that are in it – we’ll be just fine – we are The City of Bass.