What are words worth: We should change the way we talk about dance music - Comment - Mixmag
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What are words worth: We should change the way we talk about dance music

Think again before "destroying" the dancefloor

  • Louis Anderson-Rich
  • 8 June 2017

The other day, while procrastinating on Twitter, I rediscovered a tweet from Dutch artist and Rush Hour affiliate Hunee. No, it wasn't his "You can't Shazam a feeling" (a literary masterpiece), it was one from two years ago:

It struck me how relevant this comment still is. Because it’s true, isn’t it? How many times have you heard those exact adjectives trotted out to describe a set, uttered by your mate when you miss a big night or in the tweets to a successful DJ the next day. The fact is, words like destroy, smash and kill are obnoxious, cold and overwhelmingly negative and we’d be better off exploring our vocabulary. See: Wonderful, brilliant, excellent, captivating, delightful, enlightening, splendid, tremendous, rewarding, fulfilling, passionate. There are certainly enough words out there. And if you feel like these words are testing your brain capacity a little too much, maybe just say that you like something?

All of this might sound like I’m jumping the gun a bit. “It’s all a load of fun” I hear you cry. “PC GONE MAD” someone else sprays from the back. Yes, I realise when people use these terms they aren’t actually saying Patrick Topping’s basslines have them bleeding from the eyeballs. But do you think David Mancuso “killed” his dancers? Or what about when acid house (and a shit ton of ecstasy) arrived – were dancefloors being "obliterated" or were football's terraces being united? "Actions speak louder than words", "a picture tells a thousand words", "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" are all phrases downplaying the importance of language, but when words are the basis of human communication (besides the splash emoji of course) we need to start placing some importance on them.

 
 
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