Donk

Surely one of the most talked about and discussed genres in Dance Music in recent years is the highly paced frantic mix of Happy Hardcore and Scouse House music known as Donk, which is frighteningly popular in the North of the UK yet mostly unheard of South of the border, except by those involved in other scenes who may have been chain mailed the link for a now infamous video of a group of young Bolton heroes known as The Blackout Crew, with their track 'Put A Donk On It'.

Recently the team from Vice magazines website came to visit Northern Donk hotspots like Bolton and Burnley to record a documentary on some of the people involved in the scene, the scenes fans, and to visit the church of Donk, Wigan Pier.

Its a fascinating documentary to be fair, and a highly reccomended watch to anyone from other more respected Dance Music scenes who have heard of that much maligned word, or actually heard some of the music and thought, 'who the hell would listen to that shit'. You can watch the half hour documentary below.



Whilst watching this, I couldn't help but feel a bit wrong with myself for the some of the thoughts I was having about some of the people the film focused on and I cant lie, often the thought popping into my head was 'he's horrible him'.

I read a few message boards on various forums from other dance music scenes and saw that a lot of people had a similar attitude, and started to think about whether it may be a common misconception and rather harshly insulting to instantly think that about Donks audience in such a way.

Can we honestly say from watching a half hour documentary that the grimacing sweaty messes on the last few scenes in Wigan Pier are lower than ourselves? I think its a bit unfair to assume that just because they bounce round in tracksuits and listen to Donk that they are chav scum and beneath us, and this train of thought that I had myself and that I had read on the message boards disturbed me a little.

I don't and I am sure many of the people making the comments on these boards don't go round judging people on the colour of their skin or their religion etc, so why the do we make assumptions on these people based on what they're wearing and the fact they listen to a harmless form of music?

Like the documentary maker says when he visits Wigan Pier, it can't be denied that these people are probably just as much into their music as DnB heads and Dubstep heads are into their respective scenes, and by the looks of this documentary it can't be denied that these people are bang up for a party.

The thing about this documentary is that Donk isn't even a new thing and I remember my Scouse House loving mate Trevor playing tunes back in 1999/2000 that had that Donk sound , and I might get ripped on for this, but some of those tunes were really fucking pleasing to the ears when aged 16/17, and above everything else just sounded insanely fun.

The music however has obviously mutated the past decade and got unbearably harder and faster, and has had the most poisonous of ingredients added to it in the form of MC's, competing to see who can spit out the most incomprehensible lyrics the fastest, and nowadays I don't think I could bare more than 5 minutes of it before my brain melted into mush.

If this is what a huge majority of kids are into nowadays though then I say leave them be, and if it steers some kids off a beaten track and helps them to focus on doing something positive and being creative then great stuff, because its nothing actually new for kids to like silly dance music when they are aged 13-18, and its no different nowadays from what it was like in the mid 90's, only then it was Happy Hardcore that was the dominant force in silly cheesy teen music.

Fuck, I myself once donned white gloves, a whistle and glowsticks and raved like a tit to DJ Sy and Mc Storm at Helter Skelter aged 16, and do you know what, I will never deny they were probably the best days of my entire life!

I'll finish by saying that in my opinion, the actual Donk sound itself can be used to deadly effect when put in the right hands, take for example the quirky way that Hot City recently used what sounds suspiciously like a Donk on his incredible off the rails track entitled 'Another Girl'.