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10.19.05 06:50 PM
is rock and roll racist?
Toronto-based writer Laina Dawes poses the question, "If hip-hop can be color blind, why do rock concerts still seem segregated?" Her article, Rock and Roll Apartheid, posted at popmatters.com today explores white hypermasculinity at rock concerts .vs. the multicultural open arms of hip-hop music.
Given that the progenitors of rock music were black — Chuck Berry, Little Richard — it often seems absurd that white people don't expect black people to enjoy rock music, nonetheless make rock music.
Just last year, the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto presented Bad Brains:Afro-Alternative Music Summit. The Summit, the brainchild of Dalton Higgins, discussed some of the new music forms from Orchestral Pop-Noir, Romantique, Afro-Kraut and Afro-Clash to Afro-Punk and the role that Black musicians have played in the creation of these genres.
Within the Sistah’s Who Rock panel discussion, Graph Nobel, Kim Bingham (David Usher), Michie Mee (Day After), Tuku (Blaxam), Syreeta Neal and others will tackled the culture and gender question. The women are joined by Alt-Afro luminaries James Spooner (Director of the acclaimed film Afro Punk which features Friday night's Late Night Now performer Tamar Kali), Murray Lightburn (The Dears), EMI recording artist k-os, Shawn Hewitt, Adrian Miller (20th Century Rebels) and Don Cash. The afternoon sessions included the launch of the Canadian Chapter of the NYC-based Black Rock Coalition.
Kandia Crazy Horse, author of Rip It Up: the Black Experience in Rock n Roll, and an African-American woman, had her Canadian book launch during this event. And who else but music critic Laina Dawes served as the moderator of the Summit.
It's amazing that these discussions have to continue to exist. In cities such as New York, prior to the evolution of WBLS, pretty much pop and rock was all we had. When black radio, and the later hip-hop, finally evolved, it wasn't strange to be checking for David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, The Talking Heads, and Hall & Oates, as well as The Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Breakout and the Funky Four plus one, or even Doug E Fresh and The Get Fresh Crew. Besides, break beats came from rock & roll breaks, just as much as funk and soul breaks.
This just all takes me back to what I wrote in "Blurred Lines: Somewhere Between Hip-Hop and Alternative": "While digging the party message and male posturing of Flash and the Furious Five and The Treacherous Three, she developed a strong craving for the Euro-imported rhythms of bands like Berlin and the Divinyls. And while she, that's I, has often taken shots from my African-American kinfolk for it, I am proud to understand, no, love both. How could you not love both? Alternative and hip-hop both make heads nod while speaking for your young soul, both offer an outlet to party and manifest struggle; both prove there are only two types of music — good and bad."
And for the record, Bad Brains and Fishbone, though as punk as they want to be, are also straight up soul brothers. (Sorry, I just had to get that in there.)
That the foundations of these music grew of similar sociocultural circumstances - the bridge between the two makes perfect sense. So then why does Laina Dawes have to ask such questions? It's because that shit is real. Masses of white folks feel that rock is exclusively white music, and likewise masses of black folks feel that hip-hop is exclusively black music (no matter that Eminem exists or that most of the money spent on hip-hop shows and CDs and downloads comes from white males aged 18-34).
Just check out Laina's popmatters piece to see where I'm going with all of this.
posted by lynne | link to this |
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Comments
As a die hard rocker/alternative/indie/metal chick from way back, I'd have to say that I don't think the music in and of itself is racist. Like any art form, it has its good and bad aspects. I read Laina's piece and not to refute the experiences listed there, In my 20+ years of going to rock shows (almost exclusively), I've never had an experience like that. In fact, the only negative experiences I've ever had came from other black folk who insist on telling me I listen to "white" music and who take great pleasure at calling me a "white black girl".
For me, it's not about justifying why I like rock music, it's more about asking other black folks why they insist on tuning it out. Rock music is raw passion, it takes the anger, frustration, joy, desire, and sheer exhiliration I've felt throughout my life and makes it a sonic landscape. Hip-hop didn't really do that for me, mainly, I think, because I lived the reality that many hip hop artists sang about every day, and I didn't need to be reminded about how bad things were in the 'hood when I lived it. Rock was for me like sci-fi/fantasy is for lots of readers - it was purely escapist. In many ways, it still is.
posted by Cecily | October 20, 2005 5:51 PM #
Point of clarification - my separation from hip-hop happened right around the time that gangster rap became popular. Artists like Grandmaster Flash, Run-DMC and early pioneers did resonate with me. I think it was for many of the reasons you wrote about in the other piece.
posted by Cecily | October 20, 2005 5:54 PM #
u know cecily - i used to attend punk shows and ska shows at nyu and cbgb back in the day and in dc, i also used to go to a lot of industrial clubs cranking nitzer ebb and such - and i've never experienced what laina is talking about either
though i have had both white and black people not expect me to like things i like musically or otherwise, b/c it seems as if people expect for the universal monolithic blackness to truly exist
this is 2005 - c'mon folks
but as i once asked a friend of mine on the afrofuturism listserv: "if u r blk and i am blk and we share not an experience btwn us, then what is 'the' blk experience?"
posted by lynne![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.lynnedjohnson.com/nav-commenters.gif)
| October 20, 2005 6:33 PM #
Hey Girl;
I recently spoke to Maestro (a legendary rap artist from Toronto) who was telling me that in the '70's and 80's you basically had no choice but to listen to Canadian rock bands like Rush, Glass Tiger, Bryan Adams, or classical / country music, courtesy of CBC Radio, simply because that is all the Canadian radio stations played at that time. So he had an appreciation for rock before he was influenced by Kool Moe Dee and stuff. Not to explain or sway from my article, but I think that some of my shock as an adult is that anyone (regardless of ethnicity) who is in their thirties were probably collecting the same records as I was as a kid. But while some have gravitated to hip-hop and such, maybe it is all a generational thing. Us old folks - okay, maybe just me - think of the stuff we grew up listening to can appreciate the music, remember the simplier times, and are looking for that rush of excitement.
I have gotten a couple of emails from white folks that misconstrued the article as being racist(?) whatever, but as you say, blacks are not a monolitic entity, and we shouldn't base ones allegiance to the black community based on our personal musical choices.
posted by laina | October 21, 2005 8:44 AM #
Good point about Laina said about folks in their 30's. I came up watching MTV before there were any people pf color on it. And I dug stuff like Duran Duran, U2, The Police and stuff like that... I actually read a David Banner interview where he said he was into stuff like Yes, The Clash and stuff like that... I think it's partly generational. We came up when hip-hop wasn't mainstream, so we had no choice but to tune into some the other stuff
posted by Qubian Salazar-Moreno | October 22, 2005 1:50 AM #