Racism Killed Rock

[Dave de Sylvia]

OK, I was gonna post this in R&M but then I decided I wanted some good responses.

This is an article (a short one) by some semi-famous rock critic or other about how whites hijacked rock n' roll and pushed blacks out of the way more or less completely, which I think we can all agree is basically true. But watch where he goes from there, I wanna see people's reaction to it, particularly the Hendrix part.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/columns/article/8079/racism-killed-rock-part-ii/

There's actually two parts, but the first is basically just him saying how great he is over and over and namedropping dead rockstars.

[Eliminator]

Most of what he said seems true.

[White Riot!]

the most retarded rant ive read in years

[sexymuffin]

pretty retarded tbh

[Jacaranda]

ya i read that aswell and decided he answered his own questions to literal

gj name dropping limp bizkit guitarist
whatever blacks can't rock because of their skin color.
Rock is pretty much #2 in Ameri-pop’s cultural zeitgeist these days, but at the end of the day, who is more likely to be a major label’s poster child, on the cover of Rolling Stone, Spin, Blender, Entertainment Weekly, or Vanity Fair; on Leno, Letterman, Conan, a Big-Three morning show concert, or bigged-up in major newspapers and local weeklies—the rocker or the rapper?
lol he forgot to mention the source or BET odd.
i believe snoop dogg was just on the last issue of rolling stone and spin and blender are basically just rock magizines.

[_Mote_]

If black people make good music, I listen to it.

EDIT: That may've sounded a bit rascist. I also mean, it white people make **** music, i'll turn it off. Same with black people. I don't give two shits if they're purple even.

[Eliminator]

The only rock black people know about is crack cocaine!

[_Mote_]

The only rock black people know about is crack cocaine!

lmao

[Sam]

All this asshole cares about are people who made a name for themselves. That's not what music is about. He can suck a nut.

[Little Man being Erased]

Seriously, that guy is ****ing demented.




TV on the Radio.

[The Stig]

I don't like what he had said. I hate political correctness so much. Heck, I could probably find some way to say racism is why there are only a few white rappers if I really wanted to do so. People need to give some things a rest.

[Robert Crumb]

It's all opinion, but some sections don't really seem that off-base. The Hendrix stuff, I couldn't really say; I'm no Hendrix scholar and completely unfamiliar with the kind of media coverage that surrounded him when he was alive. I find it kinda hard to believe that anyone but a flat out bigot would suggest his talent/creativity came from somewhere other than his own fertile imagination and mercurial fingers. There's probably some truth, though, to the mystification and "de-negrofying" of his talents, for want of a better term.

But to be quite honest, I think he kind of suggests a reason as to why the lines between rock and R&B became drawn so clear. It wasn't so much an issue of, "Honkeys are all rock, black dudes are all roll," as much as it has to do with the fact that black audiences weren't very interested in the more fey of fey departures created by the British folk who started making their presence significantly felt. Simply, rock was moving in an English current and as a product of progression, many artists were incorporating elements of their own traditional musical vernaculars to rock. And a lot of that stuff was pretty damn lilly white in effect.

There's no denying that race played a huge part in the formative years of pop rock culture and business. It's obviously not quite as severe today as it was even 20 years ago. But I think there's still an amount of blind prejudice. But then again, Sam makes a good point.

http://www.blackrockcoalition.org/

[Zmev]

Heck, I could probably find some way to say racism is why there are only a few white rappers if I really wanted to do so.

Yeah except the part where black people didn't rip it off.

[Hedgedive]

Yeah except the part where black people didn't rip it off.

White people pretty much invented poetry.

[HNLzero]

Living Colour

[Zmev]

White people pretty much invented poetry.

Ali rap

[YDload]

dont read the article, just hit "end" and click on the youtube video

[JohnXDoe]

wow SOP good thing you didn't post this in R&M or we would have missed out on all these "good responses".

[Kage]

wow SOP good thing you didn't post this in R&M or we would have missed out on all these "good responses".

Yeah that's what I was thinking.

[DBoons Ghost]

the most retarded rant ive read in years

I agree.

What an idiot this guy seems. Just another black opportunist whining about his people's place in history. I don't even get the jist of what he's whining about. Micheal Jackson got caught with kids in his bed and he's still one of the richest pop stars in music history. No mention of that?

Berry Gordy, one of the most famous black producers in all of music, being the master of Mowtown, ripped his own people off on a daily basis. Gave no credit to the musicians, and often left even the singers out of credential reach. How come he don't mention that? This idiot's issues with record companies and mainstream media are confused at best.

[Zesty Mordant]

tbh, I was pretty much confused as to what he was specifically ranting about until he got to here (near the end):

Three years ago, Outkast was the new Beatles; two years ago, Prince had the largest-grossing arena tour; this year Three-Six Mafia won the Academy Award for Best Song. Jay-Z shills HP laptops, luxury watches, and cars, runs Def Jam / Island Records, a multi-million dollar clothing line, a burgeoning night-club empire. He’s a major investor in the soon-to-be New York Nets, instigated a successful hip-hop nation boycott of Cristal champagne, and his new “comeback” album, Kingdom Come, and world tour is already being anticipated by media and punters alike as the new millennium’s equivalent of the Second Coming.

What else? The final episode of this season of Flava Flav’s Flava Of Love rocked the highest ratings in VH-1’s history, Diddy is an award-winning clothes designer, all the cool and uncool white chicks wanna be Beyonce, Rev. Run and Ice-T’s got reality shows on MTV, white folks are still the major consumers of hip-hop culture, and Gnarls Barkley made the best “rock” song / album of the year.

What’s American rock got going on? Let’s see: Springsteen’s recording and touring Pete Seeger folk songs. Way too many lame-assed, cookie-cutter emo, indie, and jam bands. Hella undersold arena and shed tours. A nation of millions still waiting for Axl to bring it. Lollapalooza, OzzFest, SXSW, CMJ Music Marathon? Hell, for 15 minutes this year, the #1 rock album was Bob Dylan’s Modern Times!

Rock is pretty much #2 in Ameri-pop’s cultural zeitgeist these days, but at the end of the day, who is more likely to be a major label’s poster child, on the cover of Rolling Stone, Spin, Blender, Entertainment Weekly, or Vanity Fair; on Leno, Letterman, Conan, a Big-Three morning show concert, or bigged-up in major newspapers and local weeklies—the rocker or the rapper? Aluta Continua (The Struggle Continues)…

in all honesty, because he's focusing on rock's past acts in the modern era (Springsteen, Seeger, Dylan etc.) its not an issue of race, but simply an issue of demographics. Who buys these albums? Why, old baby boomers of course. And I find it surprising that he doesn't really go into detail on this a whole lot because although the music industry is as youth-oriented than ever, its the baby-boomer generation that still brings in a lot of the capital through cd sales, concerts, vh1, etc. These artists still make a tremendous killing. Why are the Rolling Stones, U2 and Bruce Springsteen are continually the biggest selling acts every year? Because they got the support of the largest demographic in North American society.

In 20-30 yrs. the wave of rap that he is hailing as the "real deal" (as well as the "lame-assed, cookie-cutter emo, indie, and jam bands" that are also referred to in the article, will be the new draw. In other words, it will be the new stale music that he is ironically ranting against.

However, I don't think the author is acutally consciously referring to demographics, because he really believes its an issue of race. However, I think this is deeply flawed because he ignores 2 major points here:

The first is not so big, but he basically writes off the "lame-*** cookie cutter emo indie and jam bands". These bands still rake in tons of cash every year. He also seems to conviently ignore the growing pop-punk market and everything associated with it. Warped Tour is a multi-million dollar spectacle

The second is more imporant and involves a term that is often used in sociology used to describe the progression of American popular music over history:

TRANSCULTURATION

In a nutshell, its the notion that two distinct cultures will influence each other and not just one exploiting the other in a zero-sum game. Afrocentric writers/thinkers/etc. (the writer of this article may be a good example here) often see the latter, while pro-white writers/thinkers/etc. also see the latter but see it as a scourge on white culture (which i won't get into).

The point is, though we are often taught to believe that all music in America was founded by blacks and then monopolized by whites (i.e. rock, jazz, disco, and now rap), it is actually much more complicated than that. Eurocentric notions of music have been long apparent in black music whether it was transcribing notation in ragtime along European notions of music theory, the use of Irish folk structures and narration in the development of delta-blues and the use of "Europeanized" string arrangements in Philly soul, "white influence" on "black music" has always been there, and vice-versa.

Even today, contrary to what the author thinks, "black" rap is not really taking back against the "white" establishment. Hell Lupe Fiasco is totally down with the totally whitebread skateboarding establishment and hip-hop producers still routinely lift the riffs and melodies of songs by the same "cookie-cutter lame ***" bands that he was ranting about.

Yes, racism has divided music in the past, but these days such lines have been understood as being so massively blurred that there really isn't much anymore to pick out and dwell. Those that do only make terribly contrived arguments like the author here. As a result, music only gets the racial treatment when people, like the author, want to.

/even worse rant.

[Amit]

the south asian underground is where it's at :>

[Bartender]

It reads like the guy wants to be Hooper X.

[JonM]

I keep trying to have a more detailed response, but basically I think it just comes down to what ZM said: It's radically more complicated than this author makes it seem.

[Africa]

Lolz why can't it just be as simple as how the author makes it seem?

Hip-hop section of record store:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/images/bestoflv/1998/photos/virgin-mega.jpg

[Rabbi]

why?

[Africa]

Why not>

[Flagjacket]

my ears are whites only.

[Endless_Nameless]

meh. I'm not sure what to make of this article. Anyways, who would you say is the last black rocker then?

[Flagjacket]

The Black guy who sings Camptown Races.

[Jacaranda]

the man from bloc party obviously or that black guy from dirty pretty things.

[bleep_bloop]

that article was stupid. i dont care what color the person making the music is.

[RIP Ian Curtis]

He did make one interesting point about Rock getting crapper and crapper, him linking it to the abscence of black guys is an interesting theory.

[_Mote_]

He did make one interesting point about Rock getting crapper and crapper, him linking it to the abscence of black guys is an interesting theory.

Rock is getting better and better, but MTV doesn't like it and it's getting pushed farther and farther away.

[YDload]

He did make one interesting point about Rock getting crapper and crapper, him linking it to the abscence of black guys is an interesting theory.

well let's face it, black people are just plain better at music (assuming you want it to have any kind of groove at all)

right now they're probably cookin up something new, now that hip-hop has successfully be captured by The Man for maximum marketability.

and by cookin up something new, i mean a new type of music, not crack ;)

[Flagjacket]

Rock is getting better and better, but MTV doesn't like it and it's getting pushed farther and farther away.

There's about as much rock as there is rap on MTV.

This that crack music niggaaaaaaa. the real BLACK music niggaaaaa

[bleep_bloop]

mash-ups are the new hip hop. pretty soon all the white kids are going to making them.

[Zappa]

Isn't it mostly white people making mashups?

[JonM]

Rock is getting better and better,
WHAT???

[bleep_bloop]

Isn't it mostly white people making mashups?

yeah i was just messin around

[_Mote_]

WHAT???

Well, it's not getting worse IMO.

Underground is getting better I should say.

[Danger Bird]

I like how he compares Joe Satriani to Dr. Know and in the same breath asks "Is Nirvana different than the Who?"

[RIP Ian Curtis]

Well, it's not getting worse IMO.

Underground is getting better I should say.

I'd disagree. I'm not pretending to be the indy king and know every little movement going on everywhere, but since I seriously got into music (around 2000, when I turned 13) there hasn't been much that turns me on. There just seems to be a lack of feeling, of ennui. It feels like what people said the world felt like before punk.

[NineBitFable]

"Is Nirvana different than the Who?"

The man has a point. They do both have 3 members.

[Jacaranda]

no they don't.

[Sepstrup]

But they both have members...

[Amit]

I'd disagree. I'm not pretending to be the indy king and know every little movement going on everywhere, but since I seriously got into music (around 2000, when I turned 13) there hasn't been much that turns me on. There just seems to be a lack of feeling, of ennui. It feels like what people said the world felt like before punk.

listen to more music

[Dave de Sylvia]

Race card = internet celebrity

[Africa]

Maybe rock was dead years ago and black people who have the best instincts about things and music and such just got out of it and invented hip-hop you know, now they'll invent something else and it'll become white-ified and etc!

[Robert Crumb]

White people drive like this.

Black people drive like this.

[shirodead]

"Is Nirvana different than the Who?"
poor guy

[DocBenway]

That article had some points, but was pretty weak overall. But I like how he totally redefines rock and then gets furious that everybody else doesn't have the same defintion as he has.
I mean, I love Public Enemy but it sure ain't rock'n'roll nor does it aspire to be. And if you're definition of rock'n'roll includes artist like Prince then the word itself is starting to get meaningless.

Black musicians has been a lot less interested in doing rock historically speaking and thus they have produced less great rock'n'roll. For every Bo Diddley there's at least one Eddie Cochran, for every Artur Lee there's several Roky Erikssons. But likewise, there's tons of Chuck D for every Eminem and I can't name a single good white soul, gospel or reggae artist.

[Dave de Sylvia]

Prince was probably more rock n' roll than anything else, especially if you take that guy's definition of rock as just about everything.

[Jacaranda]

for every Artur Lee there's several Roky Erikssons
minus the whole crazy thing...

[_Mote_]

Chris Murrey is a good white reggae artist.

[sportsfan4427]

the only good thing about that article was the Jimi Hendrix clip at the bottom, white or black, rock or r&b, tie dye or collard shirt

Hendrix is amazing

[DocBenway]

Jacaranda: Well yeah, very few people can match dementia on such a cosmic scale as Rokys :)

Spat out plath: And that's what I don't, I think he's definitions meaningless. BUt sure I can admit to not having heard more than a couple of albums with prince but what i've heard was basicly rooted in the funk/disco tradition which is pretty different from rock'n'roll.

[ihatemybass]

I'd disagree. I'm not pretending to be the indy king and know every little movement going on everywhere, but since I seriously got into music (around 2000, when I turned 13) there hasn't been much that turns me on. There just seems to be a lack of feeling, of ennui. It feels like what people said the world felt like before punk.

I agree. Music these days seems very flat and uninspired. I also can't say I've heard it all but even some of the local stuff sounds boring or unoriginal. But of course, there are a few exceptions.

[stevensonmat2]

I agree. Music these days seems very flat and uninspired. I also can't say I've heard it all but even some of the local stuff sounds boring or unoriginal. But of course, there are a few exceptions.

I think one of the biggest problems in rock today is how everyone is "trying to bring rock back". What they need to understand is that in its hayday, rock was so great because it wasnt trying to be anything, it was just the artist doing what they felt.

[_Mote_]

I think one of the biggest problems in rock today is how everyone is "trying to bring rock back". What they need to understand is that in its hayday, rock was so great because it wasnt trying to be anything, it was just the artist doing what they felt.

Yea, the Beatles weren't the biggest band in the world because they wanted to be the biggest band in the world, they were the biggest because they wrote great songs, and the sky was the limit. They didn't have many people to look up to, they just tried to be original, and make music they thought people would like.

[DocBenway]

Since most who try to bring back rock do it with stupid ideas such as "if we sound exactly like the stooges (or the kinks or whatever) we'll bring rock'n'roll back" the results are often boring. That's why very little interesting stuff is made in rock today, all the creativity exists in hiphop, electronica, dancehall and other genres.
There are of course notable exceptions, like southern gothic, klezrock and acid americana.