Everything But The Weed

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What makes music Balearic?

And can we are bothered? It is frequently argued that a group of British DJs including Danny Rampling and Paul Oakenfold ‘fell upon’ the Balearic sound (or Balearic Beat if you prefer) in the summer of 1987 after their debut trip to Ibiza.

They came upon an Argentinian DJ, Alfredo, who they crowned as the founding father of this new genre of music that they termed ‘Balearic’.

Indeed, Alfredo was spinning a new mixture of records from across a whole spectrum of styles rather than the nascent house music of the period which was looking likely to displace the Soul and Disco of the time . Yet Alfredo’s sets flitted between those genres and others, diversifying to take in slices of pop, Euro, folk music, rock, other downtempo styles, the emerging extended remixes of daytime radio pop hits, and even pieces lifted from hip-hop. It was this blend that ignited the excitability of the loved-up English and they took it back to the UK to 2 clubs in the capital, most notably Oakenfold’s night at Spectrum.

But, lately, purists have espoused that a defining factor in the development of the style was the movement that encompassed most of the North of Italy and centred because of the forward thinking Danielle Baldelli and his events at the Cosmic venue .Giving birth to Cosmic Disco, by spinning a similarly expansive selection of sound, Baldelli was one of the first DJs to so wildly mix up styles – even throwing in tunes at the wrong tempo just to create the soundscapes he was aiming for . It was this new style , those in the know claim , that eventually enabled Balearic Music to come about , having laid the foundations some five to ten years before . Even though there are similarities and connections with the Cosmic Sound and Balearic Beat, they are, in truth , different parts of the same limb of music.

Following its brief embrace in England , Balearic Beat dropped from the mainstream in all but the most discerning realms nearly as soon as it had appeared . It’s name was misapplied into anything that was remotely re-termed ‘Chill Out’ or ‘Ibizan House’ for the whole of the 90’s although the mid-90’s did see a sub-set of House DJs keep the flame alive with well chosen experiments into the Balearic Sound. Despite some purveyors of music claiming to be ‘Balearic’, that isn’t really the point .

In it’s renewed accepatnce in the last five years , those in the know have returned Balearic Beat to it’s original origins. As a non-style. No artist can thus be Balearic. Some of their music can be, but the need for the unusual and oddity in order for music to be Balearic means that no one artist can own the role. Because it ranges from one style to another, it is usually the case that a Balearic DJ set may have an alarmingly sharp turns of musical direction.

While many try to describe Balearic Music as a style, the doyens in it’s spiritual home of Ibiza regard it as a non-style or a healthy disrespect to style conformity and a challenge to the norm .

That said, there is no way to understand it unless you hear it!