Welcome back to City Spotlight, where we accentuate the characteristics of our favorite American cities that make them unique. America houses many nationalities, and its subsequent cultural collisions produce truly remarkable subcultures. Everything affects everything else, and various styles, cuisines, musical genres, and personalities collect themselves from the flow of information, forming fascinating islands in our major cities. And it sounds awesome, particularly if you have a good pair of urban headphones to receive the city sound. As the cultures bleed into one another, so can the sounds of the city and the sounds of its music, as your open ear headphones keep you tuned in to the vibe of the street. In our last installment, we listened to New York. This week, we’re turning the dial to the West Coast and taking a trip to Los Angeles.
Los Angeles!
The Music, The Culture, The People
Los Angeles’ character is typified by its sprawl. It developed rapidly in the 1800s as America realized its wealth of oil. In the early 1900s, it annexed Hollywood, and its fingers have reached further and further across Southern California since then. The West was viewed as a land of prosperity and possibility, a sentiment that persisted through the 1930s and 1940s as African-American jazz musicians like Charles Mingus, Buddy Collette, and Gerard Wilson found a haven in a small pocket of Los Angeles surrounding Central Avenue, their improvisational riffs mimicking the improvisational manifest destiny of the Southwest. Moving forward, into the 1980s, West Coast hip hop hit its stride functioning under the same principles of West Coast improvisation and entrepreneurship, with N.W.A. coming together to develop the Compton sound that would eventually influence Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg. Early rappers like Easy-E applied their street smart business ethics to the real business of music with favorable results, channeling that California bootstraps drive into creative expression.
Today the state of Los Angeles music is quite eclectic, influenced by the sunny weather and the busy city in equal parts. In the case of the former, we hear more hippie, folk-influences from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes to Rilo Kiley. In the case of the latter, there is dancier, surfier, and noisier music including The Moving Units, Best Coast, and the Mae Shi. Los Angeles is a climate that permits the sound and the fury to co-exist with the joy and the sunshine, just as its music and its city sound coexist in the right pair of bone conduction headphones.
Urban Headphones for the Active L.A. Streets
The streets of L.A. are built for skating, and it was invented in the greater Los Angeles area. Skate culture and its criticism of authority inspired a wild, eclectic, and ultimately deeply influential punk rock movement in the 80s and 90s, the effects of which are felt profoundly today. Bands like Social Distortion and Black Flag set precedents for angrier music that came to represent a particular L.A. subculture in a big way, such that L.A. punk is internationally recognized today. The soundtrack to the active lifestyle in Los Angeles is reactionary, railing against the perceived superficiality of movie culture and the decadence of generations-deep money. The 90s saw that aggression distill itself into groups like Rage Against the Machine, defined by their technical proficiency and the focus of their political agenda. On the mellower side of the spectrum, a burgeoning L.A. electronic music scene keeps people dancing with avant-garde, genre-bending musical exploration. You can hear world music, trance, and hip-hop finding equal purchase in acts like Jogger and Daedelus. L.A. holds many diverse, almost contradictory music styles in tension because it’s large enough to house them all.
The West was a place people traveled to find their fortune, to be themselves, to refuse to compromise. It was a place for outlaws and anyone willing to take a leap of faith, and, in our opinion, not a whole lot has changed. If you don’t know how to be yourself yet, perhaps L.A. can help you find yourself, as you let the warm rays of the Southwestern sun hit your face just as the beat drops in the RAC remix of “Home” by Edward Sharpe. Every second is an arrival, a new possibility, and it blossoms like a California poppy. Keep your ears open to the business of the city and your busy life with a pair of our Bluez Bluetooth headphones, so you don’t miss a beat and you’re ready for any opportunity that crosses your path.
Who is your favorite Los Angeles band/group and why? Tell us about it in the comment box below, or you can talk to us on Facebook and Twitter! Keep reading the blog for more City Spotlights.
