At first glance, house music and the Summer Olympic Games seem to have little in common. But there are some parallels that aren't too much of stretch.
1. Context
The Typing Monkey has never attended the Olympics (well, except for that awkward jaunt to Moscow in summer 1980 -- so embarrassing) but we can imagine how thrilling it must be to witness firsthand some of the world's greatest athletes in action.
Likewise, house can be genuinely exciting when the listener is there, in person, on a dancefloor, with all the appropriate sensory cues the genre was created for.
2. Expertise
A frequent complaint about house, and electronic dance music in general, involves some iteration of the "I could do that" criticism. Any dork can buy a laptop (or a sequencer, drum machine and synthesizer) and make a 4/4 beat with some bass squiggles. But those who are good at it, and have put in the time and effort to get good, are going to leave lesser musicians at the starting line.
Similarly, most of us can run, but we're not about to get up and make a showing at the 100-yard dash time trials. We sit back and marvel at the people who've found they were built to do amazing physical feats.3. Accessibility
Even non-sports fans can find something of interest at the Olympics. And there's that whole "uniting diverse cultures" aspect to the competition that remind us that a global superpower can lose to a third world nation when we're equalized by our basic human abilities.
In the same way, electronic dance music is a sort of international unifier. Though it has the advantage of being enabled by technology, it's difficult to site another style of music that's been so quickly picked up by so many cultures.What does all of this lead into? Nothing more than the following review of a two-disc house compilation. (Click the link, or scroll down a smidge.)
