Grime music and dark leisure: exploring grime, morality and synoptic control

Abstract

ABSTRACTGrime music represents a much-maligned leisure culture within contemporary British society, a point exposed by calls for the genre to be banned. This paper puts forward a perspective that challenges such a rigid interpretation by revealing how certain forms of Grime can be read as moral, exposing the manner in which such music encourages listeners into education, diverting them from the perils of gang violence and drugs. However, the paper narrates how this more ‘respectable’ form of Grime finds itself confined to the annals of dark leisure, through examining the contours of power that run through contemporary society, explored through the auspices of synoptic control. Here, the paper calls for a more contextual analysis of Grime that focusses on defining the moral messages that individual artists express rather than relying on the essentialist principle of categorising the whole genre in a negative manner.