There is a lot south London has in abundance of, like a massively multicultural heritage with large African and West Indian communities – lots of garage, drum-and-bass, and reggae – all topped up by the poor white working class, dreadlocked squatters and free rave survivors. South London has given rise to The Clash and, 20 years later, dubstep.

Now, and as a South Londoner (incidentally) I might be slightly bias, but my best guess is that dubstep would have emerged without file-sharing networks… but it might have never spread quite so far so fast.

Dub owes a lot to the south London squat scene, which was an early adopter of filesharing networks (I remember almost all squats I visited or lived in during the early 00 had one PC set up purely for filesharing purposes). Squats and squat parties (and the soundsystems) did much to catalyse the mashup that is dubstep.

Does dubstep feel the same when it’s played in a south London squat party, the Mass (if your ever in Brixton, resist the temptation to go there, it’s a tourist trap), in a New York club, or on an iPod… absolutely not, regardless how big the base. As with selling, you can download low frequencies, high frequencies, and the midrange tones, but not much else.

The biggest contribution filesharing and social networking sites have made to what is now mainstream dubstep is access to distribution. Squats and filesharing are merely an outlet for those that cant afford to participate in the mainstream – it was done on a PC by folks who had no money for instruments, vinyls, recording equipment, hiring big clubs (and don’t even mention clearing samples). It’s a pity that much of the debate around music and filesharing is about trying to justify the value of music beyond royalty payments to big studio bosses. Like music does not exist unless it has an EMI contract. Music is culture, and emerges as such. When Napster came along I remember people getting exited about it because they could upload their own music for others to download, not because they could download big names for free. People don’t remember that now, but filesharing has always been primarily driven by those who wanted to share and create, rather than rip something off. Chances are, in 20 years south London will give rise to another music phenomenon, making due with what’s available – plenty of culture, frustration and whatever is affordable.