The digital subversion of urban space: power, performance and grime

ABSTRACT

Digital technologies play an increasingly prominent role in the reproduction of society and space. Rather than being studied as a separate category of understanding, the ways in which such technologies intersect with and inflect upon the real world has provided a recent focus of research. Urban music is inherently spatial, but the ways in which digital technologies have enabled artists to resist injustice, to reproduce space and to reclaim the right to the city has not yet been considered. This article fills the lacuna by exploring how grime artists harness digital technologies to resist marginalization by the mainstream and create new expressions of power. Specifically, it shows how digital enablers have led to the democratization of music, which in turn has empowered grime artists to reclaim the right to represent the spaces of the inner city, and, in doing so, to challenge and subvert more wide-ranging structures of power and inequality. Accordingly, I argue that grime is more than music and is as much a channel of social activism as it is creative expression.

Les technologies numériques jouent un rôle de plus en plus important dans la reproduction de la société et de l’espace. Plutôt que d’être comprises et étudiées en tant que catégorie séparée, les façons dont les technologies croisent et influencent le monde réel procurent un centre d’intérêt récent pour la recherche. La musique urbaine est fondamentalement spatiale mais les façons dont les technologies numériques ont permis aux artistes de résister à l’injustice, de reproduire l’espace et de se réapproprier le droit à la ville n’ont pas encore été considérées. Cet article comble cette lacune en explorant comment les artistes grime exploitent les technologies numériques pour résister à la marginalisation par les courants dominants et créer de nouvelles expressions du pouvoir. En particulier, il montre comment les facilitateurs numériques ont mené vers une démocratisation de la musique, qui, ensuite, a donné les moyens aux artistes grime de récupérer le droit de représenter les espaces du centre-ville et, ce faisant, de défier et subvertir toutes sortes d’autres structures de pouvoir et d’inégalité. Par conséquent, je soutiens que le grime est plus que de la musique et est autant un vecteur d’activisme social qu’une expression créative.

Las tecnologías digitales desempeñan un papel cada vez más destacado en la reproducción de la sociedad y el espacio. En lugar de estudiarse como una categoría separada de entendimiento, las formas en que tales tecnologías se cruzan y se mimetizan con el mundo real han proporcionado un foco reciente de investigación. La música urbana es intrínsecamente espacial, pero las formas en que las tecnologías digitales han permitido a los artistas resistir la injusticia, reproducir el espacio y reclamar el derecho a la ciudad aún no se han considerado. Este documento llena la laguna al explorar cómo los artistas dentro del género musical grime aprovechan las tecnologías digitales para resistir la marginación de la corriente principal y crean nuevas expresiones de poder. Específicamente, muestra cómo los habilitadores digitales han conducido a la democratización de la música, lo que a su vez le ha dado poder a los artistas grime para reclamar el derecho de representar los espacios del centro de la ciudad y, al hacerlo, desafiar y subvertir las estructuras más amplias de poder y desigualdad. En consecuencia, se sostiene que dicho género musical es más que música, y es tanto un canal de activismo social como una expresión creativa.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital media
• urban space
• right to the city
• grime
• power
• hierarchy

MOTS CLÉS:

• médias numériques
• espace urbain
• droit à la ville
• grime
• pouvoir
• hiérarchie

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• medios digitales
• espacio urbano
• derecho a la ciudad
• música grime
• poder
• jerarquía.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Interview with Time Out (6 May 2016).

2. I use ‘digital technologies’ as an overarching category that includes the hardware (e.g. smartphones, computers) needed to create digital media, and the software (e.g. mobile apps, computer programmes, websites) needed to edit and share it online. Social medias are a more specific form of digital technology that enables the dissemination of digital media.

3. As a point of comparison, such information is not required when bands perform in public places.

4. The MOBO Awards is an annual award ceremony held in London to recognize artists that perform Music Of Black Origin.

5. A hashtag (#) is used on social media to identify and catalogue messages that relate to a specific topic.

6. Merky is one of Stormzy’s nicknames, which he subsequently evolved into the brand and record label #MERKY.

7. ‘Streets of Rage’ is a video game, popular in the 1990s, which involves players beating up members of a crime syndicate.

8. ‘Paying subs’ refers to the practice of up-and-coming MCs paying to perform live on pirate radio stations like Heat FM, Rinse FM and Déjà-vu FM, the aim being to get their sound out to a larger audience.

9. Murkle Man is a renowned grime producer, and part of Skepta’s Boy Better Know label.

10. The Brit Awards is an annual award ceremony hosted in London to celebrate the best British music of the past year. It is a mainstream awards ceremony where the successes of grime artists have traditionally been overlooked.

11. Konnichiwa, the album from which Shutdown is taken, won the Mercury Prize in 2016; in 2017, Skepta performed Shutdown at the Brit Awards.

12. A G is a friend or gangster and is a common part of London slang.

13. Wah gwan is Jamaican patois that has since gained common usage in London slang; it is used as a greeting, roughly meaning ‘what’s going on’.

14. Mandem refers to a group of (male) friends and is also commonly used in London slang.