pparently it can help to process emoA tions if we listen to music that matches our mood. “For me,” Coby says, “some noise feels cleansing.” This isn’t to say that Coby is annoyed or upset, though. For the entire conversation he sits back in his chair and looks off to a corner in the room, deep in audible thought, only to occasionally focus back on me and laugh at himself for going off on a tangent. “Noise,” he continues, “can be meditative in itself.” It’s the same way with lower frequencies; sub bass, dub music. “These go through our bodies and into the core—undiluted, concentrated noise.” So what are we left with to define noise by? “Jazz used to be considered ‘noise’ by the so-called ‘mainstream’, he tells me. Jazz musicians were ‘formally’ trained but searching for a style of music not restrained by the parameters they studied. Nina Simone, a classically trained pianist, was dubbed as a ‘jazz musician’, which at the time carried certain labels reminiscent of connotations that used to be heavily associated with hip-hop before the 2000s; it was the stripclub music of its time and she famously felt some type of way about it. It undermined her musicianship compared to her counterparts who were white. Same with Miles Davis—another musician who went through traditional, institutional training. He didn’t like to be called ‘jazz’. He said jazz was another way for critics to discriminate to call him the n-word. He described the music by his peers and him as ‘social music’ and an attitude rather than a definable sound.” “Of course,” he adds, “jazz is heard differently now, it’s not considered ‘noise’. It’s understood more, it’s accepted—mostly. It’s the same with hip-hop, rock & roll, funk, reggae, house etc. Eventually they get popular or accepted; sometimes through artists, personalities and labels who either crossover without compromise; sometimes through artists, personalities and labels who are considered ‘palatable’ to the mainstream.” 84 — Discourse
In 2003, the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone hosted Rise Festival at the Millennium Dome (now the O2 Arena) with Public Enemy as one of the head liners. As a young teenager, Coby says he was blown away by their live performance. The North-American hip-hop group formed by Chuck D and Flavor Flav in the 80s attracted attention for their unabashed and radical politically charged lyrics and criticism of the media and racism faced by African-Americans. Coby hears them in a lot of music at the moment, not related or restricted by genre, but this energy that struck him as a teenager standing in the audience listening to Public Enemy, he feels it again. It’s not just the politics, the lyrics or the message they shared; It’s a feeling that’s interwoven into their songs: this urgent feeling. An unshakeable sense of fearlessness. Public Enemy upset the status quo within hip-hop. Not only did their messages confront the listener with their black nationalist politics, their music was also often sonically unpleasant. Their sample- filled, sonic signature was created by their production team, the Bomb Squad, and often referred to as “organised noise”. They created technically impressive, dense, multi-layered productions full of abrasive samples from far reaching genres like pop, rock and heavy metal—a technique more common today, but at the time it was a sound that defied categorisation and left them as outliers of hip-hop. This raw expression, “without any diluting or compromise for acceptance or palatability” is essential for Coby. It stops us in our tracks, it diverts us and it teaches us something new. Music, in its rawest form, is often labelled as “noise” or “noisey” by the mainstream because it’s either not understood or it doesn’t align with what is considered to be “acceptable” or following familiarised rules. “I don’t know the origin of the word noise,” Coby says. “Sometimes I think the word noise has been
