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Paris Hilton does her DJ act at the Pop Music Festival in Sao Paulo in June (above), while DJs Angus Wong (far left) and Aline Magnier spin at the DJ Lab event in Bali. Dance music has hit the big time, with Deadmau5 making the cover of June'sRolling Stone.Photos: AFP

Forget overexposure claims, electronic dance music is here to stay

Forget Paris Hilton. Electronic dance music is strong enough to overcome any form of overexposure,DJs and producers at Bali lab tellsAdam Wright

Paris Hilton's recent debut as a DJ in Brazil had a similar impact on the world of dance music as the Hindenburg disaster had on the airship industry.

When the American socialite appeared on stage in Sao Paolo in June wearing sequinned headphones and went through the motions over an obviously pre-recorded setlist, the electronic dance music (EDM) community threw its hands up in despair and was quick to pounce.

"To be fair, the Mayans saw this s*** coming," the notoriously acerbic DJ/producer Deadmau5 tweeted.

June was the same month that Deadmau5 - who's best known for wearing an outlandish cartoon mouse head and generally offending people - became one of the few electronic music artists to grace the cover of magazine, accompanied by the headline "Dance madness - the clubs, the festivals, the drugs and the DJs who rule the world".

It was also the same month that the Electric Daisy Carnival, arguably the world's biggest dance music festival, attracted 320,000 people over the course of its three days in Las Vegas.

After spending years in the shadows and providing the soundtrack for a small but dedicated underground subculture, electronic dance music is officially big business. But now that it's got to the point where even Hilton is jumping on the bandwagon, one question is being asked repeatedly: has dance music jumped the shark?

It was a question on many lips recently in Seminyak, Bali, where the W Hotel was hosting its second-annual DJ Lab event. Seven up-and-coming DJs had been flown in from cities as far afield as Sao Paolo, Berlin and Istanbul to attend a four-day boot camp, where they received instruction in areas such as DJ techniques and music production from mentors including Rob Garza of US dance music duo Thievery Corporation, British audio engineer Paul Nolan, and Jason Bentley, music director of Los Angeles radio station KCRW.

While sharing a disdain for Hilton's headline-grabbing antics, the mentors at DJ Lab were united in the belief that its current peak in popularity wasn't necessarily a bad thing for EDM.

"People saw Paris' publicity stunt for what it really was," says Bentley. "Madonna has been doing things like this for years, and there have also been other artists from outside this scene looking to reinvigorate their careers. This kind of interest in electronic music is cyclical - there is a bubble forming at the moment, and there will be a market correction … But the poppier side of the movement will ultimately lead people to discover the electronic music that has real substance."

Nolan adds: "In my experience, the music I was listening to early on by artists like [industry veteran] Paul Oakenfold served as a 'gateway drug'. Within a few years I was into more credible artists like Sasha and John Digweed, and then by the age of 25 I had a good understanding of a wide range of dance music. The industry is now seeing growing pains for sure, but the more underground music needs to be more open and recognise that it's all a part of the same movement."

And it's a movement that those dedicated underground types are having to share for the first time with the titans of big business. American media entrepreneur Robert FX Sillerman recently said he planned to spend US$1 billion acquiring companies involved in EDM, and Live Nation, one of the world's biggest concert promoters, recently bought out Hard Events and Creamfields, two of the biggest names in dance music events.

The W Hotels, never too far behind a trend, have recognised the extra cachet that an association with electronic dance music can bring. The company is making a significant investment in its in-house DJ programme that hotel spokespeople say is a sign of confidence in the future of the musical movement.

Michaelangelo L'Acqua, the hotel group's global music director and executive producer of the DJ Lab event, says the hotel decided to align itself with the movement about four years ago when the sexier sounds of the sub-genre known as nu-disco started to filter out of Los Angeles and Paris. It's now an important element of their long-term strategy, he says.

This influx of money and the new focus on dance music as a spectacle have of course led to a backlash - 's Jim Fusilli recently criticised the listener "who wants nothing more than predictable, middling entertainment" in a column headlined "The Dumbing Down of Electronic Dance Music". But even in that article, which tore strips off mainstream figures such as David Guetta and Calvin Harris, industry veterans such as Richie Hawtin saw a bright side to EDM's explosion in popularity, saying: "This new generation of producers are getting a new generation of people into the sound of electronic music."

Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the young DJs flown out to Bali for the DJ Lab event agreed. Angus Wong, a Hong Kong DJ who took part in the first DJ Lab event last year in Ibiza, Spain, and is now the artistic director of the W Hong Kong hotel, says that when it comes to the audience for his music, the more the merrier.

"The bigger the crowd, the more diverse the music will get," Wong says. "And when people dig deeper into electronic music, they will gain a greater understanding of the genres and discover the real quality music. To many people, it's all just EDM. But to us, there is a whole range of genres, like techno, house and dubstep."

Aline Magnier, a Berlin native who performs at the German capital's most famous clubs such as Watergate, Tresor and Cookie's, notes that electronic music has been around for 30 years. "I welcome that fact that more people are listening to it. I don't really see a change in the music so much - in Berlin I've actually seen more people listening to a wider variety of music, even the downtempo stuff based on funk and soul samples. Maybe the peak will end, but I don't see electronic dance music ever dying," Magnier says.

And perhaps it never will - at least for as long as people need an occasional distraction from the frustrations of modern life.

"With the world being in the state that it is now, dance music is serving as a kind of outlet," says another of the young visitors, DJ Klaus from London club Bijous (also soon to open its doors in Hong Kong).

"Life's so tough right now. We're here to make people happy; we're not here to change lives. Well, just for a short time, at least."

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Everybody dance now
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