Ghislain Poirier and the rise of "global ghettotech"
Source: By David Dacks
Posted: 11/05/07 4:03PM
Filed Under: Music
The Drake Underground is swelled with Friday night regulars for old-school hip-hop night Never Forgive Action. But first on the bill is Montreal electronic musician Ghislain Poirier. Backed by a live drummer (to underscore the deep beats emanating from his own laptop) and a few vocalists off his just-released album, Poirier gets the partisan crowd onside with hip-hop-inspired sounds. Then things take an interesting turn.
MC Zulu launches into “Go Ballistic." The beats head off in a more syncopated direction and before you know it, the room is bouncing to soca. Sure, this is a less euphoric, grittier variety of soca, but it is still unmistakably Trinidadian for an audience that, for the most part, is not a Caribana crowd.
In the wake of M.I.A.’s global electronic fusion, Poirier’s new album 'No Ground Under' may find itself appealing to a growing audience curious about “global ghettotech.” This intentionally sardonic term, coined by ethnomusicologist Wayne Marshall at wayneandwax.com, describes a loosely-defined aggregate of club and soundsystem-based music from around the world currently championed by certain American and European DJs and the music media.
In a sense, the audience for this survey of styles updates the similarly generalized “world music” audience of the 80s. However, global ghettotech is not a world music-style celebration of exotic sounds, but DJ mixable hybrids constructed from drum machines and synths available the world over. This music is designed to hit hard on the dancefloor, not background conversation at your local café. These musical genres are inspired by the organ-rattling bass of massive speaker towers, sexually-charged dancers, and fierce (even violent) rivalries between local MCs, DJs and producers. Anyone who’s seen a Sean Paul video has at least a clue as to what the appeal is.
In the last few years, the blogosphere has whipped up a frenzy over the music of urban Brazil (baile funk), Angola and Portugal (kuduro), Jamaican dancehall, and, of coures, the urban mutations that occur in the basements of New York, the Dirty South, London and Paris. At worst, global ghettotech is merely a shallow exercise in cultural tourism for those seeking the next MP3 blog buzz (not to mention it generally involves the musical creations of poor people being leveraged by wealthier, media-aware types).
On the other hand, this attention has resulted in indie dance labels such as XL (M.I.A.) and Domino (Bonde Do Role) venturing into uncharted waters. Furthermore, since global ghettotech covers such a wide range of music and geography, many artists, DJs and bloggers hybridize their own sensibilities in the forms of musical creations, DJ sets or MP3 blogs.
Poirier is one such example. His musical career has encompassed stints as a college radio DJ, club DJ and producer. And he continues to refine his own style by acting locally while thinking globally. Living in Montreal, Poirier’s recently concluded “Bounce Le Gros!” club night of globetrotting booty beats attracted wildly enthusiastic crowds. He DJs for the contemporary, multicultural audience in Montreal—French and English, of course, but also drawing from the new Francophonie of Quebec: Haitian, Senegalese, Algerian and beyond. The crowd dynamic is enlightening for him and for fellow patrons.
“I love having mixed crowds. I play a lot of stuff which is underground on a certain level but really appeals to people. When you play an underground track from Haiti, most people don’t know what it is but if you’ve got people from Haiti in the crowd, they’ll be twice as loud as everybody because it’s talking to them directly. They’re like ‘What’s going on here? Here’s a track from my country that I’ve never heard before!’ So it’s really fun to surprise people that way.”
The most dominant influence on his new Ninja Tune album 'No Ground Under' is dancehall. Even the dancehall best known to mainstream North American audiences is still characteristic of the unusual accents and synthetically stylized methods of the genre. Jamaica has always been a hot house of intense competition between rival ‘sound systems’ (mobile disco set-ups) which feed the Jamaican predilection for constant newness and originality in music. Poirier clearly admires the music and the environment that fosters it.
“Dancehall is pushing the limits of music so much. It’s so hard, yet it’s popular music in Jamaica. I wish it could be like that in Canada and in other countries. Those kinds of rhythms are so inspired to me.”
'No Ground Under' draws from Montreal’s multilingual talent to create a sound which may actually represent a coherent primer of global ghettotech. The first vocal track “Blazin’” with Face T (from Montreal’s Kulcha Connection) is a very appealing dancehall confection, yet features a middle section which could have rocked the British ‘ardcore scene at the turn of the '90s. Like so much of the music on 'No Ground Under,' it’s ingenious and gently experimental. His skipping, skanking beats make the most of the bumpy rhythms of his ‘ethnic’ samples, bringing out their hidden dancehall potential.
“I don’t play the world music card. That’s not the point. The point is to bring people I know that have talent. I don’t want to [present it] as exotic, but on the same level I feel all the people on this album, all [our] influences are on the same level. It’s urban bass, the urban music that’s made in so many countries. I’m living in Quebec, I’m more open to what’s happening in France, Europe, Africa. I think the album reflects that and the French-English patois, too. There are many accents in the world—I don’t think the accents make it 'world music.' Since the beginning [I make music] for the world.”
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