How an electro-techno freak got the beat

"You will never understand modern pop music if you persist in regarding it as music. Modern pop music is talked about as if it were music, but in reality things like house and acid jazz and hip hop have very few of the recognisable ingredients of music."

These startling words are those of Radley Stoke, Professor of Applied Popular Music at the University of Milton Keynes, who has been exploring for 10 years just why it is that young people become addicted to sounds that seem so unalluring to the rest of us.

"You mean, why young people like such terrible music?" smiles Professor Stoke. "Go on, say it! That's what you mean, isn't it? Well, of course, all generations have said this about their youngsters' taste in music, but this time it does seem to be different. For a start, you cannot imagine them liking it in 20 years' time. This is new. When the big band generation grew up, they didn't throw away their Benny Goodman, Bing Crosby and Glenn Miller records. They went on listening to them. They still do. When the rock 'n' roll generation grew up, who would have thought that 30 years on they would still be spinning their Rolling Stones platters - do I have the lingo right? I fear I do not. But then, who ever thought the Rolling Stones would still be playing?

"However, with these new sounds, it is different. I cannot imagine somehow, and I may be wrong here, but I cannot imagine that in 20 years' time middle- aged people will assemble in their living rooms to nod to the flashing electro-techno machine sounds to which they raved in earlier days. And I use the word 'machine' advisedly. The one difference parents would notice now if they went to a modern bash is that there are no musicians, only machines. This is the first time in history that the musicians have vanished from music.

"Well, not quite true, perhaps, because in the olden days the aristocrats would hide the musicians in a gallery so that they could be heard but not seen. Nevertheless, what people heard was recognisably produced by humans. Today's dance music is not. It is machine music. Drum machine, click machine, synthesiser, sampler - these are today's instruments. And none of them is played by a human being. If you have ever been to a rave, you will know that there is no relationship between the dancers and a bandstand, as there used to be. The dancers are now surrounded by the sound. They do not know where it is coming from. They let themselves be invaded. Or, more accurately, they give themselves up to it - it is as if they were plugging themselves into a vast electronic keyboard!"

But why? Why become part of a pinball machine when you could be enjoying music?

"I will tell you why," declares Professor Radley Stoke. "It is a parent substitute."

How's that again?

"It dates from early childhood. Have you noticed how children are carried around these days ? Not in people's arms. Not in back packs. In front packs. Yes, they are suspended on their parents' chests, facing inwards. All they can see is the underside of their parent's chin. All they can hear is the beating of their parent's heart, two inches away. I am convinced that this heartbeat runs through their childhood. Like aural breast-feeding. And they hate being withdrawn from it so much that later on they find substitutes for it."

Substitutes? What substitute can there be for a parent's heartbeat?

"A personal stereo, of course. All those teenagers sitting in trains with earphones clamped to their heads, listening to the beat - they are not listening to music! They are re-experiencing the primal heartbeat! And when they later go on to the rave experience, they are all recapturing their very early childhood together! What they think of as a thrashing, hopping, sophisticated beat - it is only mummy's heartbeat they are trying to call back to! They call it music, but in reality it is more like the noises that a hospital scanner will find in a human body, highly amplified."

Tell us more.

"I am sorry. To find out more, you must wait for my forthcoming TV Arena special, Dancing With Mummy - the Story of Modern Dance Music ..."

I can't wait.