Gatekeeping is the practice of limiting experience and interaction to a topic, idea, or what have you. It's a strange phenomenon, coming from people who view themselves as experts or veterans and they use fake outrage or dismissiveness to try and keep "their thing theirs." Gatekeeping comes in many forms, but it is especially rampant in music, and surprisingly enough Electronic Music and DJing too. Here's why it is a load of bullshit.

I Know From Experience

No, it wasn't someone trying to keep me from experience something, but my attitude towards newcomers that had me holding a gatekeeper attitude for a long time.

I first was introduced to electronic music around 12, but didn't really get into it until my first raves in California when I was 16. From that moment on electronic music changed my life in ways I never thought possible, and it only took me a short time to begin to DJ too. My journey into it, and how electronic music was not as widely accessible in popular culture in the U.S.A. at this time made me someone proud to listen to the abnormal, the stuff we followed because we sought it out, and not heard it on the radio.

While big artists like Tiesto and Paul Van Dyk had made some small headway, along with the ever classic Daft Punk single here or there, it wasn't until deadmau5 came into popularity that US culture was changed permanently.

Suddenly you could hear pop electronic on the top 40 stations, and everyone quickly flipped from scoffing or laughing at you when they repeated back "you listen to techno?" when you told them of the many genres you liked to people who danced along at the club. Along with this new surge of popular electronic, festivals began to take off and become a widely accepted thing.

In the early 2010s, younger generations were now familiar with Afrojack and Electric Daisy Carnival and helped fuel its dramatic boom that still continues to this day. You could literally go to Target and pick up your copy of DJ Hero, a shitty turntable plastic substitute that had absolutely nothing to do with DJing and further widened the gap between what DJs actually did and the new rockstar celebrity that they had become.

Everyone felt like a tourist, polluting this beautiful thing that you had earned and worn like a badge of pride. Now people would say they loved techno when the hottest progressive house track dropped on the local station. It left a sour taste in my mouth and made me resent these 'phonies.'

Why I Was Wrong

My newfound hatred for what I felt were posers blinded me to the undeniable fact that I no longer had to fight or explain my love of everything electronic. Was I entirely wrong, and was the country flooded with a lot of musical tourists following the latest trend? No, definitely not. But that doesn't matter. Every newcomer was a chance to truly help someone experience and find the electronic music that they liked. As I've said countless times, nobody really hates all beer - they just haven't found the right one for them out of the near limitless options out there.

Was the DJ as an icon becoming some twisted and perverted figure, with christ-like poses and flashy lights? Perhaps. It probably would have naturally progressed here anyways without the new fans anyways. And that's the problem with a cultural movement, you have no control over it. Why would you want to though?

We're all along for the ride, whether it's the latest of 6 Marvel movies coming out this year, or sitting in some restaurant with cutesy hanging hipster lights. So why fight it? Just take what you like and ignore the rest, and be happy there's more to fill your plate with.

Things becoming overloaded with excitement can lead to messy and awkward growth, but the electronic music scene is infinitely better than it ever was and it is all thanks to that influx of people that I childishly hated all those years ago.

Open Invitations

With any art, music only gets better the more you can share it with others. It's amazing sharing files over IRC of the newest CD rip of some obscure European dance mix, but it is even more amazing to casually bump into someone listening to something right up your alley on their air pods.

With my shift into approaching creativity through the thoughts in The Steal Like and Artist Trilogy, specifically Show Your Work, the age old adage of Sharing is Caring doesn't seem like such an adolescent concept about not being a total prick to your classmates while you play with your blocks.

There's a real magic to sharing things like an amateur frantically digging for the next piece of inspiration, and not some veteran who's been there and done that.

Why Does It Need To Be Said?

It never needs to stop being said, no matter the idea or community, but it is still scaringly relevant to electronic music today. While a lot of rock fans will be divisive over metal compared to alternative, or classic versus recent rock, there is still usually an underlying respect. You have musicians, they learned to play their instruments, and we can all relate to that. So why is it so different in electronic music?

Some of the most severe gatekeeping happens within electronic music. Don't you dare mention trance in front of some underground techno artists or they will kick you out so hard you'll never heal the bruise on your ass. Want some festival goer to check out the latest new release from a Spanish tech house producer? Good luck, although there might just be more open minded people in that group than any other, surprisingly enough.

While everyone likes what they like, and music is entirely subjective, there is a very clear difference between saying "it's not my thing" and downright rejecting someone's musical tastes completely. For the majority of us, we had to work hard to find our electronic music communities, producers, DJs, and scenes. So why would we want to have a shit attitude to someone who had to do the same?

Maybe it's human nature. All I know is that we could all do a little better in tolerating and being open, and we might just pick up some new love along the way.