Cool Course: Global Electronic Music

Some fans who are drawn to electronic music by the heavy bass of London’s hyperdub and the slick synths of American hyperpop may not have thought much about the music’s global origins or its cultural references to Africa, Jamaica, and New York City.

But as students enrolled in Global Electronic Music I learn, the artform’s roots in hip-hop, reggae, and Afrofuturism are central to its story and its continually evolving sounds.

“A lot of electronic music is invented somewhere, but then because of politics, economics, or marketing, it gets appropriated, reinvented, and sold as something else,” says Music Adjunct Faculty Delia Martinez, a producer, composer, and DJ who teaches the course. “We study the structures and the paths the music has gone through, and then let that influence the students creatively, as producers and artists.”

Offered by the Music Technology Program in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, Global Electronic Music I combines history, musicology, ethnology, and technology to study the global genre and help students master the tech skills required to contribute to it.

“We do musical analysis that helps students think about rhythm and harmony, and then we have hands-on production tasks,” Martinez says.

Martinez began one recent class session by reviewing the requirements for an essay and composition assignment that asks students to use elements, styles, or sounds they dislike or reject as the foundation for the piece. “You can explore how a negative can be beautiful when reimagined,” she said.

To illustrate, she opened her digital audio workstation and began to search for hyperpop, a subgenre she doesn’t like. Martinez narrated her moves like a play-by-play broadcaster, breezing through a series of drop-down menus and right-click options as she shared insight about her choices.

“Pro-tip: Always label and save these experiments,” she said, noting that they might spark creativity “when you’re staring at a blank canvas.”

During the course of the semester, Martinez organizes the material geographically, presenting different sounds and styles from New York, London, South Africa, Brazil, and Japan.

“The global focus widens their scope of references,” she says. “We look at different scenes in different places and within that, the different genres, so we can trace the influences.”

By the end of the semester, students will master the production and theory behind electronic music through assignments focused on improvisation, acoustic analysis, and transcription. The final project is a three-minute piece of electronic music—shared in a classroom concert—and an analysis of a piece of their choosing.