Music
Spent Saturday night at The Hideout. How we stumbled into this Queen West joint, I dunno. They had a live band. Must have been called Noise - that's what it sounded like. When did banging a cymbal at 10 second intervals qualify as music?
Maybe brown and black folks march to a different drum, but I like music with a beat, with rhythm, with soul. Music you can bust a move to.
That's what I'm talking about.
Give me Stevie Wonder, James Brown, old school Michael Jackson, Kanye, Rihanna any time. Some of the best expressions of romantic love were penned in the Motown era. Marvin Gaye? Poetry. I can't imagine how stale the music scene would be without the contributions of black artists. What's left... John Cougar Mellencamp? The percussional noise James calls music? (Sorry James.) Even the more tolerable white music - like the bluesy rock of Led Zeppelin - is black-derived.
I know a lot of people rag on black folks, but they fail to see that without black people, America would lose a huge and indelible part of its cultural heritage. Nobody really thinks about it - growing up in North America you take it as a given - but it's incredible how many prominent black celebrities there are. Could you imagine the NBA without brothers? There aren't even that many black people in the country - they're what, 10% of the population. About as many black Americans as there are Canadians - but they punch way beyond their weight in their share of international prominence (name 10 Canadian celebrities). And this is a group that couldn't share a water fountain with the majority in some places a generation ago.
You've got to give credit; when kids in Jo'burg and Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur are emulating black American culture - whatever your judgement on its merits - that says something. The most powerful man in the world is a black American guy. The richest woman is black. No other 10% minority that arose from the ashes of slavery and Jim Crow has attained that level of prominence, anywhere. The combination of innate black charisma/creativity and white-American fueled capitalism/global media hegemony makes for a potent mix.
Perfect allegory for the modern black/white American dynamic.
Maybe brown and black folks march to a different drum, but I like music with a beat, with rhythm, with soul. Music you can bust a move to.
That's what I'm talking about.
Give me Stevie Wonder, James Brown, old school Michael Jackson, Kanye, Rihanna any time. Some of the best expressions of romantic love were penned in the Motown era. Marvin Gaye? Poetry. I can't imagine how stale the music scene would be without the contributions of black artists. What's left... John Cougar Mellencamp? The percussional noise James calls music? (Sorry James.) Even the more tolerable white music - like the bluesy rock of Led Zeppelin - is black-derived.
I know a lot of people rag on black folks, but they fail to see that without black people, America would lose a huge and indelible part of its cultural heritage. Nobody really thinks about it - growing up in North America you take it as a given - but it's incredible how many prominent black celebrities there are. Could you imagine the NBA without brothers? There aren't even that many black people in the country - they're what, 10% of the population. About as many black Americans as there are Canadians - but they punch way beyond their weight in their share of international prominence (name 10 Canadian celebrities). And this is a group that couldn't share a water fountain with the majority in some places a generation ago.
You've got to give credit; when kids in Jo'burg and Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur are emulating black American culture - whatever your judgement on its merits - that says something. The most powerful man in the world is a black American guy. The richest woman is black. No other 10% minority that arose from the ashes of slavery and Jim Crow has attained that level of prominence, anywhere. The combination of innate black charisma/creativity and white-American fueled capitalism/global media hegemony makes for a potent mix.
Perfect allegory for the modern black/white American dynamic.
posted by Sen | 3/08/2009 08:51:00 PM
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3 comments
3 Comments:
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Anonymous
"I know a lot of people rag on black folks, but they fail to see that without black people, America would lose a huge and indelible part of its cultural heritage."
3/09/2009 03:29:00 PMYou win some, you lose some.
"You've got to give credit; when kids in Jo'burg and Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur are emulating black American culture - whatever your judgement on its merits - that says something."
It says rebellion, decadence, and moral decline.
"The most powerful man in the world is a black American guy. The richest woman is black. No other 10% minority that arose from the ashes of slavery and Jim Crow has attained that level of prominence, anywhere."
I believe the pushing of Blacks and what we see as "Black culture" (which USED to represent soul (i.e. Marvin Gaye) and is now "gangsterism" (i.e.50 Cent)) is deliberately being pushed by media barons to subvert traditional Western values. Even on BET, they have banned "intelligent artists" because "the target audience doesn't like that kind of stuff".
http://www.petitionnow.com/BETVIDEOS/petition.html
Black culture was far different and much more wholesome in the 1950s and 60s from what it is today. I don't think this is any accident.
"The combination of innate black charisma/creativity and white-American fueled capitalism/global media hegemony makes for a potent mix."
White global media hegemony? Hahaha. Depends who you qualify as White. I think you're giving us too much credit.
Yeah, I expect I'm going to get flamed for this.
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James
Sen, you're right about the influence of black culture, especially in music. Just about all popular white and Asian musicians today can be traced back to African Americans, who have introduced blues, R&B, rap, reggae, and jazz to the masses. There's definitely been a lot of great black artists over the last century.
3/14/2009 03:58:00 PMHowever, at some point, black music began associating itself with gangs, violence, and greed. Growing up in the 90s, my first exposure to black culture were of cars, "bling bling" and gangs, which I never understood. What does "being shot 9 times" have to do with making good music anyways?
I should also add that those "noisy percussion" instruments are originally African. White music has traditionally been purely melodic, with much less rhythm and no percussion.
As well, many under-estimate the number of black celebrities emulating white culture. In fact, Motown is a very "whitewashed" form of black music. Notice the emphasis on melodies while the rhythm and beat are kept very simple. Also notice that the Supremes have very straight hair and look like old school white housewives. Of course, let's not forget about your boy MJ - yet another black person turned white! So how black is black culture?
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Sen
James, you'll like this
3/16/2009 10:28:00 PMhttp://musicthatmakesyoudumb.virgil.gr/mtmyd/MusicthatmakesyoudumbLarge.png
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