As the millennials have begun to bleed into the post-2010 generation, electronic dance music has begun to overtake hip-hop as the preeminent genre of mainstream pop music.  And Syracuse University is playing a progressive role in EDM’s rise.

Before an unexpected back injury forced him to postpone his show, Dutch disk jockey Tiesto had scheduled a concert at the Oncenter Complex Oct. 2. Instead, opener Dada Life, who performed with David Guetta in Syracuse a year ago, played at the Westcott Theater.

“DJ’s have become the rock stars of our generation. These artists travel on a more intense schedule than any other genre of artists,” said Ken Consor, concert director of University Union. “We were the first college show for both Avicii and Kaskade.”

Since EDM began its meteoric rise as a mainstream genre in spring 2011, many of the genre’s biggest names have performed on and around the SU campus. Swedish DJ Avicii started the trend in September 2011 when he co-headlined Juice Jam with rapper B.o.B.

One year later, Scottish DJ Calvin Harris co-headlined the concert with rapper Childish Gambino. The show sold the most tickets in the concert’s nine-year history with 8,500.

American DJ Kaskade was also the main draw for last spring’s Block Party concert, making the last three major on-campus concerts headlined by DJs. That concert also set a record for the largest general-admission floor area ever for a concert in the 32-year-old Carrier Dome.

“The hard part about bringing big name artists is they often prefer to play festivals or large public stages instead of colleges,” Consor said. “The massive success of the large-scale University Union shows in the past two years has helped us become one of the strongest college concert boards in the nation.”

Not coincidentally, Kaskade was the first EDM headliner in the venue’s history.

UU’s pioneering efforts to put EDM shows on campus have spearheaded the local following. Over the past year and a half, many student DJs have been going public as well.

With the help of Marshall Street Records, local artists were able to compile their work on “ElectroCuse,” an EDM compilation put together by students in the Bandier Program for Music and the Entertainment Industries. The first “ElectroCuse” album received more than 1,000 downloads upon its release last spring, and Volume II is due out later this fall.

“Our goal is to have ‘ElectroCuse’ on the iTunes of every student at SU,” said Dan Annibale, general manager of MSR.

The movement isn’t just restricted to the SU campus, though. Other industry megastars, like Tiesto, Skrillex and David Guetta, have performed at the Oncenter and the Westcott Theater in the past year.

“It’s blue-collar kids too, aged up, aged down, even high school kids are into the scene,” said Dave Rezak, director of SU’s Bandier Program. “Syracuse is a microcosm of middle-class America.”

The combination of euphoric drugs and exhilarating dance beats has turned EDM into a transcendent live music movement comparable to the Woodstock era of the late 1960s. Syracuse alumnus Rob Light believes it has staying power.

“Live music is the future of the business,” Light, the Creative Artists’ Agency talent mogul, said in a speech to Bandier students on Aug. 30.

Meah Pollock, a junior in the Bandier Program, backed up the notion of EDM’s importance as a beacon of live performing, though the music itself does not particularly appeal to her.

“Personally I’m not a huge fan of EDM. I go to some concerts for the experience, but I don’t really listen to it otherwise,” she said.

As an agent, Light provides a business perspective. As a student, Consor provides a consumer perspective.

“The best EDM artists create and play a music that yields a strong physical response in the form of dancing. Being in a room with thousands of others all physically responding to a single source of music is powerful,” Consor said.

Many music fans outside niche circles like Syracuse still knock EDM because it’s not organically produced with singing and instruments.

But supporters, like Annibale, will counter that it’s merely a product of evolutionary progression.

“It’s impossible to classify a genre as ‘real music.’ All sound that’s created as a form of expression is ‘real music,’” Annibale said.

The one area where EDM falls significantly short of other art forms is its capacity for storytelling, Rezak said. EDM songs are notoriously light on lyrical content: They’re typically just dance sounds with a few catchy lines mixed in.

That’s all right for live concerts, but it may have trouble persisting in the recorded music industry, Rezak said.

“All forms of media have to have a story to have any real impact. So it has to shift in that direction,” he said.

Consor believes EDM has already started to make this transitional shift. He pointed to efforts like David Guetta’s 2011 “Nothing But the Beat” album and Calvin Harris’ collaboration with Rihanna on smash-hit single “We Found Love.” Guetta collaborated with pop artists, like Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, Usher and Chris Brown, among others.

“They create the musical foundation for much of the pop music on the radio today,” Consor said.

Rezak thinks that the evolution of EDM as a genre depends on the digital generation.

Said Rezak: “You’re the first digital generation and EDM is a natural byproduct. It’s an evolution of music that reflects what you do with your fingers. Pablo Picasso popularized collaging, where he took pieces of photos and put them together.”

Published on October 3, 2012 at 3:44 am

Contact Jarrad: jdsaffre@syr.edu