White Music, Black Music

Dave Matthews Band, Lenny Kravitz, Bad Brains, Sevendust, Killswitch Engage, and God Forbid disagree with you. If you wanna stretch it a little, you can toss Rage Against The Machine and Guns N Roses in here.

I dare someone to give me an equal number of white rappers with the same level of presence within their chosen genre that aren't generally regarded as a joke.

Rock music isn't influenced by "black music"? That's what rock music is.

You're making an awfully huge generalization there.

Frankly, this is the kind of discussion that I find pretty boring, especially when it comes to music, something you hear. When I listen to good music, I don't use race as adjectives to describe it. Sure, Sly and the Family Stone "sounds" black while Talking Head sound "whiter," but what's more interesting to me is the evolution of both bands sound. The Heads started as a punk band and evolved in radical ways, including dabbling in straight up funk. Sly started as a funk-rock psychedelic band but grew as songwriters and created much darker music after the 60's. Their race, to me, is kinda secondary...and frankly not a very interesting thing to discuss.

I mean, take TV on the Radio, an indie band made up of mostly black musicians. That's the least interesting thing about them, don't you think?

Living Colour, The Dead Kennedys, Thin Lizzy, fuck, Jimi Hendrix for fucks sake. Look, Rock and Roll is not white people music, I say this as a white guy in a rock band. White people rent rock, but it's owned by the people who originated it. You want pop music that white people didn't rip off from black people? Country. Ugh.

You live in Winnipeg, perhaps?

Never mind forays in to many times of world music. Hell, listen to the stuff Byrne has done since the Heads.

No, you're putting words in my mouth. I hate the term "color blind" and agree that to "be blind" to someone's race is incredibly ignorant (not to mention, you know, impossible).

Obviously people have different life experiences based on their race. But they also have different life experiences for a huge variety of reasons (class, gender, upbringing, etc). It's all those factors taken and how they influence someone that I find more interesting. I'd wager that class has a greater effect on people's lives then race. But we can't "see" it, so we make assumptions (or rather, don't make any assumptions).

As for black musicians not represented in rock bands, who cares? You're acting as if the music industry is somehow keeping black musicians (or musicians of color) from joining rock bands. And there are plenty anyway, so it just doesn't seem like an important point. What I was trying to argue is that the music is the important thing. Most forms of modern music have roots in black musicianship, so it's just a not something I think about when I listen to music. You can't call that color blind because there's nothing visual about it. I always think what a band/musician looks like is the least interesting thing about them. I mean, if their image is the most interesting thing about them, that's a fucking problem.

I'm not trying to deny that there isn't race inherent in some music. If you told me that the members of Funkadelic or The Wu-Tang Clan were white, I'd call you a liar. If you told me Vampire Weekend were black, no way.

I just don't get what your original point is. It sounds like you're saying, "look at my diverse musical taste, aren't I cool? By the way, I have black friends. Some viewers (like the unwashed masses who watch MTV) aren't as culturally sensitive as me."

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Zing!

Louse, one thing I find interesting is how you break this down into black and white. As if there aren't other races or ethnicity's to consider.

Had no idea they were black until I was listening to them for about a year actually.

Indeed

You forgot God Forbid.

There's a guy in Sepultura who's black? The more you know...

I would also add Danko Jones in the rock acts that are black. Suicidal Tendencies, 24/7 Spyz and Fishbone as well.

Yeah, Derrick Green he's been the singer since '97.

Also, here's God Forbid.

There is no such thing as "white" and "black" music. I think you're confusing "urban" with "black". It's a cultural thing rather than a color of skin thing. It's not hard to find a black kid in the suburbs that listens to punk or a white kid in the inner city (poorer area) that listens to hip-hop. Then there are those that follow trends...

I wouldn't say any person is predisposed to liking a certain kind of music based on the color of their skin as much as where they grow up and what they are exposed to on a regular basis. That's just me though.

What arguments? You're saying that "there aren't enough black people in rock music" and then people point out all the black rock musicians and you're saying "those are the token black rock musicians!"

It's not like the band is some group of super-villains sitting around, saying, "Hey guys. You know what we need in this band? That's right. A black guy."

You're still acting under the impression that it's not up to the individual to gravitate towards whatever musical style they want to or are interested in. I'm not saying racism doesn't exist in the music industry, I just think it's a little ridiculous to claim that white rock musicians are racist because they don't have enough black people in bands, all while claiming that myriad examples people have provided you of the opposite as invalid.

And I'm still not really sure what the point of this discussion is. I'm still clinging to my hypothesis about your original post from above.

ETA: By the way, you mentioned that you don't think this problem exists in hip hop. But that's preposterous. Maybe not on a racial level (although I'd liken to guess it's about the same, but also difficult to compare since there are plenty more solo hip-hop musicians than groups or bands) but think of it from a cultural standpoint. Hip-hop has developed into a culture all of itself, with set rules and regulations. DOOM, nerdcore, they're great hip-hop, and so is Public Enemy, but they still fit into a type of mold. If you played a WHY? record to a hip-hop fan, I'm guessing they'd hate it, even though it's pretty much a hip-hop record. Does that mean that everyone embedded in hip-hop culture is antisemitic? Of course not.

And you're talking about how "white people" are dominating the genre of rock and roll and acting as if that signifies something about race in America. But since there are plenty of other genres of music where black musicians are insanely more popular than other musicians, doesn't that make the point kind of moot? Or, in the very least, kind of ...predictable and not really worth talking about?

I mean, most white people aren't running out to check out the new Tyler Perry movie that opens in theaters first thing (nor should they, because he sucks). Does that comment more on race in America, or how a product is being sold? It's possible it's both at once, but it's kind of like..."duh" either way, don't you think?

Ok, this is a gigantic topic, so just a few separate thoughts on my side:

1-The conventional narrative about Rock (and most forms of american popular music!), i.e. that it's white musicians stealing from black musicians, was never really true and the reality behind it is much more complicated; Rock takes its influences from all sorts of sources (Dave Marsh has written well about the latino influence, for one.) Which is not to say that it's an egalitarian situation where Rock comes 50% from black sources and 50% from white ones, or that white artists didn't steal from black ones, just that it's all very much a muddle, and you won't find a "purely" black style much as you won't find a "purely" white style (and Chris is VERY wrong here about Country - Hank Williams was taught how to play guitar by a black dude, the banjo oroginates from Africa, and from Ray Charles to Solomon Burke you'll find dozens and dozens of black artists who've been influenced, and contributed to, the legacy of Country music.)

2-That being said, I don't think you can really deny that as some point in the mid to late 60's, Rock music started to become a white signifier that it previously wasn't; i.e. in the late 50's and early 60's you'd have an about equal amount of black and white artists doing Rock & Roll music, while during the following decades a black artist doing Rock music would be the exception, not the rule. This is why I don't really see mentioning Thin Lizzy or TV On The Radio or Living Color as much of an argument - it's a bit like a Country fan pointing out Charley Pride. How exactly Rock music became "white music" is an interesting discussion to be had, but I don't think it's a "current" issue - it happened ages ago.

3-Audiences will always tend to be less segregated than genres and music journalism tend to imply; without coming off too "free to be you and me" here, people of all races buy music from al sorts of different genres, that's sort of a given. This is where Timothy's argument comes in, though to be honest Tim I think you're just switching one set of false signifiers with another; plenty of Hip-Hop fans out in the sticks, plenty of Indie bands in the inner city. But when we're talking about "black" or "white" in pop-cultural terms, we're almost always talking about a culture, not an ethnicity - though of course the main signifier of said culture being skin tone, things get even more complicated, and so yer hypothetical middle class suburban black teen will still draw confused looks from people for liking Indie Rock and not caring about Hip-Hop, while the white Hip-Hop lover will still draw "wigga" chants.

4-That being said, even if you go back to a more nebulous term like "the black community", things don't always pan out as pop-cultural mores indicate it would; i.e., the white artists most popular amongst people fond of black music often are those that white listeners would most associate with stereotypes of "whiteness" - thus a lot of head scratching at that Hip-Hop tribute album to Phil Collins in the 00's, Chris Martin out of Coldplay's strong demand as a hook singer and Old School Hip Hop's infatuation with Kraftwerk, just to name a few examples.

5-So as a musicologist you can always draw these connections to undermine the idea that any genre is the exclusive province of any one ethnicity, but at the same time this doesn't change how the genre's perceived in the wider pop-cultural spectrum, which will still hold Hip-Hop as "black" much in the same way as it will hold Rock as "white".

6-However, since Obama is president we live in a post racial society, so I'm guessing in another few weeks this will all be sorted.

Nicely put, Daniel.

This thread reminds me of Sasha Frere-Jones' infamous "A Paler Shade of White" article, which is still bullshit for so many reasons (for starters, you've got a guy from an all-white band bitching about a lack of musical miscegenation, as if throwing some more syncopation into rock will somehow bridge racial divides).

That whole article is a po-faced take on "black drummers have a beat like this, white drummers have a beat like this" bullshit.

Nothing good could ever come from comparing Arcade Fire to the Clash.

But seriously, I don't think Frere-Jones's article is nearly as wrong as you guys seem to - I mean he's pretty explicitly talking about musical miscegenation, and I don't think he ever implies that this would lead to any sort of racial harmony - just more interesting music. I think he is right that 80's Post-Punk bands were more inclined to draw influence from various black* sources (Disco, Funk, Reggae, Hip-Hop, even Afro-Beat) than today's indie bands are. Where we differ is I think nine times out of ten, those 80's Post Punk bands pale pretty extremley before the artists they're influenced by, and I actually think the current Indie fascination with stuff like glee club singing and ultra-white Folk has much to do with said influences now seeming as obscure and otherworldly as Muddy Waters must have seemed to Mick Jagger, so it's natural people would pick up on them. Plus I don't give a fuck about

Another element to consider is that, even though Talking Heads or Public Image Ltd or whoever channeling James Brown/Fela Kuti was certainly a strech for their musical sensibilities, at least all those artists functioned in a similiar medium - you might have to hire some horns, but apart from that the instruments used to play Punk and Funk are pretty much the same. But the biggest development in black music since that era has unquestionably been Hip-Hop - which is just based on such a different formula than Rock that integrating those influences becomes a lot harder and less of a natural move (unless you're in the Indie-Dance subgenre, where some cross-pollination has happened.)

Of course, a few years after that article was published we did have a hot new Indie band spring up that's heavily influenced by black music. That band's name is Vampire Weekend, and we all know how that turned out.

EDIT: Haha, I was going to write "don't give a fuck about 'what Rock & Roll is about', but I think I like it more this way.

* Always talking about the "cultural" black and white here, lest there be confusion.

Okay, I was over-simplifying. But when one talks about "miscegenation" and not merely "genre-mixing" or what-have-you, it automatically carries a connotation of actual race, not merely "the perceived racial characteristics of a musical genre." As you put it, rock'n'roll is intrinsically a stylistic muddle, even if it's come to signify "white." To say that indie rock needs to be blacker is to define blackness in a problematic way (and a self-serving one, given that his band plays "black"-influenced music - despite not having any black people in it).

Plus, he basically categorizes music into "white" (and "boring," like the Arcade Fire, apparently) and "black" (exciting and funky!). "White" and "black" are not singular cultures. Even if we insist on dichotomizing by race, within "white music" and "black music," there are a myriad of avenues to explore. If the goal is synthesis, there are countless ways to accomplish it without drawing from funk, R&B, hip-hop, etc.

It seems to me that a lot of this stuff is just more deeply embedded and less on the surface than it was in, say, Gang of Four, PIL, Talking Heads, or the Chili Peppers (or Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon, for that matter). In addition to Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective, Yeasayer, and Dirty Projectors all have some polyrhythmic underpinnings that owe a lot to Afro-Beat. Even Grizzly Bear and the National are percussive and polyrhythmic in some interesting ways. Granted, most of these bands became much bigger after Jones' article, but they're not really considered a New Wave of "Black-Influenced" Indie Rockers. In fact, most would probably consider them just as "white" as the Arcade Fire.

[quote]Another element to consider is that, even though Talking Heads or Public Image Ltd or whoever channeling James Brown/Fela Kuti was certainly a strech for their musical sensibilities, at least all those artists functioned in a similiar medium - you might have to hire some horns, but apart from that the instruments used to play Punk and Funk are pretty much the same. But the biggest development in black music since that era has unquestionably been Hip-Hop - which is just based on such a different formula than Rock that integrating those influences becomes a lot harder and less of a natural move (unless you're in the Indie-Dance subgenre, where some cross-pollination has happened.)

Excellent points, all. And the pointers that rock artists may have picked up from hip-hop may not be the ones that Jones would have liked them to pick up, but that doesn't make them any less "black". To go back a ways, I've always liked the fact that Fugazi's "Repeater" was their Public Enemy homage. It's totally there on the surface (the repeated, dissonant guitars mimicking the high-pitched chaos of the Bomb Squad production), but the song emphasizes elements that aren't necessarily "hip-hop" so much as "Public Enemy's particular brand of hip-hop."

It's never a good sign when a thesis springs from one particuar event, I find - I think we all have these "this is really THE BEST THING EVER/WORST THING EVER" experiences with pop culture, but they're so unique that starting to theorize from there usually doesn't lead anywhere too constructive. The article also starts off by engaging with a soundbyte (Arcade Fire = new Clash) that is just so patently ridicolous that I really think it's below Frere-Jones (who, as an aside, I really like as a critic - his work for Slate was always good value) to even bother refuting it. On some level, I think Frere-Jones just wanted a chance to dance at an Indie concert again, which is something that (at the risk of conjuring the worst "natural rhythm" bogeyman) all of the black forms the article discusses are good at, and most white forms (short of a Polka revival or a return to Western Swing) aren't. For me at least, at the end of the day that is blaming something for not being something else; really if I want to dance there's an embarassment of good Hip-Hop/Techno/House/Disco/whatever stuff out there; I come to Indie for pretty melodies and sad dudes with guitars. That's partly my problem with 80's Post-Punk, too - it's certainly danceable, but more often than not in such a grudging, grim fashion that I really can't be bothered.

I'd argue for the use of "miscgenation" as a metaphor (daily bread of the music critic, dontchaknow), but of course things are still way too tangled that you could have this discussion without race figuring in somehow. And as soon as that happens, everyone gets way too defensive and at the end of the day you'll always have someone who thinks they've been called a racist. I really don't think that was Frere-Jones's intention in that article, at the most I'd accuse him of unwarranted nostalgia (what made 80's music great will make 00's music great), and I think the reaction from indie blogs at large was way too shrill and hysterical, but as I said, that was sort of inevitable.

I agree that miscegenation can work as a musical metaphor, but then it needs to be treated as such, which means we're just talking about stylistic mixing. In this sense, it's miscegenation when Arcade Fire ties its big, classical string epic to strummy early-80s Springsteen like on "Antichrist Television Blues" just as when Joe Strummer dunked his pub rock and punk into a vat of ska and reggae - or, for that matter, Wilco mixing Krautrock and crunchy Americana on "Kidsmoke". Jones' mistake, to my mind, is in fusing this metaphorical use with the traditional, non-metaphorical meaning of miscegenation by writing specifically about "black" and "white" music.

It also gets into questions of "authenticity," one of my least favorite notions in popular music. Jones argues for greater representation of "black" style in rock music partially because of its historical importance in rock's development. The implication is that this would represent a needed return to roots, which is an argument for musical purity through miscegenation, interestingly enough. I think it's a mistake to think of music as "authentic" and "inauthentic," so I'm not buying this argument on that level, but even as an argument for musical miscegenation on a racial level, it's messed up. Even if it's not always on the surface, rock intrinsically has a component of blackness to it due to this history - why not argue for more Asian-ness or something?

Probably true. And I have liked other articles by Jones. Oddly enough, he did a nice, very positive piece on Bon Iver, who is substantially less danceable than the Arcade Fire.

Is that unusual, though? Kelis is in that sort of dance-pop arena that arguably includes everyone from Madonna to Beyonce to the Backstreet Boys to Michael Jackson to Lady Gaga to Shakira and on and on (depending on how inclusive you want to be). It's been a lot more racially heterogeneous than guitar-oriented indie rock or hip-hop for decades.

I don't know if it's that unusual, I just thought it was somewhat relevant to the thread.

We're definitely at a point where - as dreary louse originally suggested - the distinctions between 'black' and 'white' music are blurring. Hell, when rappers start squeezing into the type of skinny denim that was once the sole preserve of shaggy-haired white rockers, you know things done changed. I read an interview in XXL where the rapper Drake said his competion this year isn't just his hip-hop peers but also groups like MGMT and anyone making "great music", which about sums things up, I think.

Anyway, here's my small contribution to the air of musical unity: Kidz in the Hall doing their thing with a Grizzly Bear sample to great effect...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8863K5e1E4

Also, as much as its easy - and appropriate - to right him off as a complete tool, I think Kanye West deserves a lot of credit for broadening the notion of what hip-hop can encompass and generally retuning the ears of all musical 'tribes' a little bit.