The Death of Rootedness

The Death of Rootedness

The death of Donna Summer reveals the problems we're facing: the loss of rootedness and context. You see, without Donna Summer, there'd be no house music, no club dance scene, no Channel O, but most people who listen extensively (many exclusively) to these musics and inhabit these contexts have never heard of her. We have as a species shifted (a seismic shift, equivalent to the Industrial Revolution) from nationalism towards a global village, one unified worldwide culture, that contains a bit of everything, a genuine mash-up, but in so doing we have disconnected our ties to the particular histories that allowed this social world to come into being.

And, of course, it's not just the dance scene. During the late seventies (think Eagles' Hotel California, think Fleetwood Mac's Rumours), rock music was also changed forever because of Donna Summer. When Brian Eno arrived in Berlin to join David Bowie for his Low and Heroes albums, he had a copy of Summer's I Feel Love and was telling everyone, "This is the future". He was correct, and Bowie (who was a new convert to the electronica of Neu!, Can, and Kraftwerk) agreed. That nascent sound is all over Bowie's Berlin albums and the changes that followed were tidal.

Music is central to the new global village and our lives; it will continue to be, but without rootedness we can justifiably be apprehensive. I recently saw some youtube comments on a piece of classical music: "Oh, this music is just for the old people, and they'll be dying out soon." Our sense of history is dying, and with it goes our sense of proportion and rightness. Everything is now up for grabs.

Love in Berlin, 1977

Berlin 1977

We've got nothing to lose and nothing to gain/ we can be lovers and kiss in the rain/ we can be lovers just for one day/ we can be heroes; what do you say?

Recently I've been listening again to David Bowie's "Heroes" album and it's taken me back... Bowie recorded it in West Berlin when he was living near the wall with Iggy. During 1976-8 I was in and out of West Berlin because I had a berliner girlfriend who lived there, at Neu Spandau, out by the edge of the city. I also knew a few pretty women who stayed at Wedding and a guy whose father was a lawyer and I spent time with my friends and caroused and danced and talked and made love and walked the city and enjoyed its odd decadence and lasting vibrancy. "Heroes" came out at that time, and I bought the German version, 'Helden', for my girlfriend and played it repeatedly late one night while the rain poured heavily outside her flat. It was a good time, a time of another world, of a world long passed but not gone. This week I've been surprising myself with whispered glimpses of that silent age.