In this week's Super Ego clubs column, I finally take on the banger scene's hardcore electro glitz riot on the city's dance floors. The sound and style originated in France, mostly, and is helping to resuscitate the much-maligned term "euro" -- commonly associated with over-caffeinated, hyper-sugary tunes that fitted really awful embroidered jeans and Gucci knockoff sunglasses on a couple generations of appletini swillers.
I'm much more into the new euro, needless to say, and in Paris at least, bangers are associated with a dance craze, tecktonik (also spelled tektonik). Here's what it looks like, to the wonderfully banged-up tune of fabulous French rapstress-chanteuse Yelle's "A Cause de Garcons." (Her show here at the Independent last month was off the hook, btw, and she featured a sequined pink Stephen Sprouse-like dress reading "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Fierceness!)
Goofy, but sweetly energetic. The dance in fact originally started in the early-mid 2000s, in Parisian megaclub Metropolis, where it was performed to a much harder sound, a direct descendant of rave music: much more trancey and happy hardcore. (It's said the term "tecktonik" actually refers to the clash of hardcore dance styles coming in from Belgium and the Netherlands then, crashing into each other like techtonic plates.)
The two somewhat over-it-looking white dancers in the Yelle video above are famous lookalike tektoniquistes VaVan and TreAxy -- household names in France. Here's a video of them performing an early version of the dance, called "jumpstyle" (some still prefer to call it that, others use the name to refer to the music) and done to a "more traditional" musical style -- you can really see the liquid rave-dance origins here, and yeah, it looks more than a tad ridiculous, but why not?
There's a reason for the term "jumpstyle." Also happening at the time -- around 2005ish, as with all underground phenomena the timing is fuzzy -- and in the same clubs, but to more amped-up happy hardcore, was a revival of the Melbourne Shuffle, an old rave dance from the early '90s that really only looks good when you do it in extraordinarily baggy pants. The "shufflers" often squared off with, or at least disassociated themselves from, the tight-pantsed "jumpers." (In my head, they're like the Jets and the Sharks.) Also, despite its name, "jumping" is much more about the upper body and random skips, whereas "shuffling" is all about lower glide. Here's the Melbourne Shuffle:
So, OK, what does any of this have to do with Justice, and the Ed Banger Records scene and sound?
Nothing much, maybe, except for geography. But jumper fashion, with its sharp angles and glamourous profile, seems a lot more suited to the euro-punkish attitude that came in with the bangers -- and sure enough, that fashion, dance, and haircut have been trademarked by Cyril Blank, Metropolis's artistic director, as "tecktonik" and are being marketed into mainstream banger clubs. Quoi? That's how it goes when you need to make those euros.
Continuing on (and before I have to pay royalties for writing this), tecktonik really broke bigtime in November of 2006 when this French kid named Jey-Jey posted a video to YouTube of himself tecktonikking out in his garage to a funkier, tighter sound than the blares and sirens of happy hardcore. The tune is Mylo's "Muscle Car (Sander Kleineberg Mix)," and sounds like it could slip easily into any banger DJ's set. He looked like a gay breakdancer, plus really euro, so it served as a flashpoint for all kinds of communities:
From there, tecktonik became a European media phenomenon. Even though, somewhat unbelievably, all the men above claim to be straight -- hey, it's France -- tecktonik was the unofficial dance of many of France's Gay Prides in 2007. It's become like breakdancing in the '80s (women are very active in the scene as well), with everyone taking on crazy graffiti-taglike names, but spelled as if they just texted you or accidentally hit CAPS LOCK halfway through.
I'm not sure, though, how the kids of color in the outer banlieues feel about tecktonik, and many French folks are already reacting by getting back into a slower, more hip-hop sound (I've even seen it referred to as "slow-hop"). In any case, you can see people rolling their eyes at all the skinny boys and girls writhing about in this news report -- the kiss of death for anything underground -- from French TV in September of last year:
You can find a zillion more tecktonik/teknotik vids on The Web. Like Chicken Noodle Soup and Aunt Jackie, this is a total YouTube dance phenom.
And whatever you think of the glam spasms above, you can't beat this precious golden nugget: Here's a completely heartwarming and hilarious vid of some guy who claims to have been raving tecktonik in 1993. Roots!
PS - oh good lord, it may really be over now.
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Comments (4)
I live in France and can tell you that the Tecktonik is NOT dead. Oh maybe the masses have discovered it, but that doesn't make it dead. Get off your high horse, there's room for us all. I see young people on the corners in Toulouse dancing Tecktonik every weekend, now mashing it up with world music and different dance elements. You didn't discover it, neither did I, boo hoo, if you like it great, if not great, but who cares if it is dead or not, I'm not out trying to find the latest trend, I could care less, but I can assure you, in France it is alive and well.
Posted by francetales.com | May 14, 2008 12:44 PM
That's a good point, francie, and touches on something I've been wrestling with a bunch lately: now that music and style are available to all (at least for listening and viewing on the internet) -- what is "underground"?
For old-school househedz and ravers like me, underground meant music you could hear nowhere else but in the clubs from certain DJs, in an atmosphere that was more accepting and more creative than the outside world of daily routine. It could rescue you if you felt like an outcast ("last night a DJ saved my life!") and offered a community of fellow freaks that gave you a reason to feel fantastic as who you were -- and energized you to move forward (thus all the diva affirmations that cropped up). I'm not saying that attitude wasn't a big part of it -- clubs could feel as hierarchical as high school at times -- but the subversion was that the bottom was now at the top.
Now it seems that "underground" is transforming in meaning into a certain aspirational code of dress, attitude, and tight knowledge of the latest music whose key is unknowable (the meaning of "cool") but whose influence is shared by all. Bombarded by media, it's all about having the right filter -- and connecting with others whose filters match up with yours. Just a theory, there. But whatever makes you feel better about yourself in the realm of the clubs is fine with me -- and much more than a trend.
Anyway!
Posted by Marke B. | May 14, 2008 07:50 PM
Word. Of course, I also remember how great it felt when I realized that house was spreading on a global scale ... and when I thought that rave would rule the world forever. So I'm stoked that kids can also really feel that again -- being part of a big new something.
Posted by Marke B. | May 15, 2008 11:25 AM
I know just what you mean, I was into the music scene in the Bay Area in the 80's and 90's and know how it can make you feel like you finally fit in even if it is as rigid and structured as society. I teach English to students in France at an engineering university and I laugh every time they try to tell me something is underground or indie music. They are French so they can handle the critique but I say, If you know about it, it isn't underground, they laugh, but anyway.
At first you didn't see a lot of girls doing the tecktonik and people started saying, "Is it a gay things?" Now you see more girls. At my gym there is even a weekly class to learn to dance the tecktonik. It has been featured on every "Today Show" type show in France. Someone is even trying to write some kind of an open source Wii Fit style tecktonik game. Yes it is becoming saturated and their will be the diluters but they will pass too.
Do what you like, not what you think you should like.
Posted by francetales.com | May 15, 2008 12:43 PM