Bert Williams in blackface.
Let me say up front that I really liked Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop by Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen. It does one very important things you don’t often find in books about American minstrelsy (I’m looking at you, Love & Theft)—it describes what a minstrel show was like in clear and engaging language that conveys some of the charm of the art form without making you feel like you’re drowning in boring overly-academic prose. For that alone, it’s worth reading.
There’s also this really, really nice moment where Taylor and Austen describe Flournoy Miller and Johnny Lee, both black comedians, doing a blackface comedy routine in the movie Stormy Weather. Then they give a whole paragraph to the history of the routine, which Miller had been doing since at least the Twenties. And then the paragraph ends in this: “By the estimation of black comedy historian Mel Watkins, it was as familiar to black audiences as Abbot and Costello’s ‘Who’s on First?’ was to white audiences.” (p. 292) This bit of contextualizing is so amazing—you get the bit (or a bit of the bit), the bit’s history, and then a sense of the bit’s reach.
But I don’t think that Taylor and Austen ever quite satisfactorily address why blackface minstrelsy was so popular among black people—both performers and audiences. They brush up against it in the chapter on the Zulu parade in New Orleans, when they say, “Zulu history has been largely whitewashed, scrubbed clean of its origins in caricature, parody, and stereotype. Instead, blacks paint their faces out of respect for a tradition that, like the rest of the black minstrel tradition, has always been focused on entertaining its audience. For the Zulus, as for many black and white minstrels in the nineteenth century and earlier, blackface simply stands for a very good time.” (p. 106-107).
Tradition and pleasure are strong motivating factors and I wish Taylor and Austen had wrestled more with the implications of this insight. We like a lot of things because they’re familiar and because we find their familiarity pleasurable. I kept waiting for them to make this explicit—black people didn’t/don’t enjoy black blackface minstrelsy or its popular culture descendants because (or only because) they recognize some truth of who they are on stage; it’s pleasurable because they recognize the performance.
Or let’s look at it it from a slightly different angle. In 1993, Alan Jackson took “Mercury Blues” to Number 2 on Billboard’s country chart. It’s a cover of K. C. Douglas’s 1949 song, which is sometimes called “Mercury Blues” and sometimes called “Mercury Boogie.” “Mercury Blues” contains a line, which, in Alan Jackson’s version goes, “gal I love, stole her from a friend, he got lucky stole her back again” and in Douglas’s version goes, “girl I love I stole from a friend, the fool got lucky stole her back again.” But the line also lives in other songs. In Robert Johnson’s “Come on in My Kitchen” (1936) it goes, “the woman I love, took from my best friend, some joker got lucky, stole her back again.” Back in ’31, Skip James, in “Devil Got My Woman,” sings “The woman I love took off for my best friend, but he got lucky, stole her back again.” But it goes back further to at least Ida Cox’s “Worried Mama Blues” back in 1923—“I stole my man from my best friend, I stole my man from my best friend. But she got lucky and stole him back again.”
There’s a real power in recognition. When I learned about this repeated verse, I felt as if some great secret history of America had been revealed to me in a lightning flash, as if I had learned a way pop culture connects through time. It pleases me to recognize those same words in all those very different songs and I trust that at least some of you will be delighted to recognize them too. And it’s not because all of us have experience passing a loved one back and forth with our best friend. We take pleasure in recognizing the familiar bits. Of course, this kind of recognition of familiar bits can also be disturbing. When you know Walt Disney took inspiration from The Jazz Singer when he made “Steamboat Willie,” how do you ever look at Mickey Mouse’s white gloves the same way again?
So, when J.J. Walker makes his entrance, or later, Flavor Flav, isn’t there a delight in recognition—not of that type in the community, but of that type in entertainment?
Which brings me to the thing that I think Taylor and Austen fundamentally misunderstand. It’s up there in the Zulu quote, but they also state it explicitly on the third page of the book, “The minstrel tradition, as practice by whites in blackface, was a fundamentally racist undertaking, neutering a race’s identity by limiting it to a demeaning stereotype. But what Chappelle and other contemporary performers draw upon is the more complicated history of black minstrelsy.”All this is true. But, it misses an important and complicating component of white minstrelsy—a lot of white minstrel performers thought they loved black culture (I say “thought they” because any kind of black culture white men could have observed in the 1800s would have been carefully performed by those black men, because of the incredible danger the black men would have been in had it been misinterpreted).
In Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, Eric Lott says that, for these white minstrels, “To wear or even enjoy blackface was literally, for a time, to become black, to inherit the cool, virility, humility, abandon or gaité de coeur that were the prime components of white ideologies of black manhood.” (p. 52) (I don’t want to get sidetracked from my point, but I also feel like it’s important to state explicitly how terrible this belief of white men—that they could know black men through mimicking them—was for black men. It is at the heart of why white men could justify all the terrible things they did to black men. White men believed they knew the secret motivations of black men, because some of the white men, white men believed, had literally been black men briefly through imitation.) And this is the hard thing to accept, but the only thing that makes sense of minstrelsy, both black and white: it is racist and demeaning AND it is about a deep fantasy of how awesome it is to be black. Those things are both true, and, in fact, in a racist society like ours, you rarely have an admission of the latter without the former firmly in play.
Once you get that, the power and attraction of blackface minstrelsy—not just the components of the minstrels show, but the actual wearing of blackface makeup—for black people is obvious. If every single thing in the broader popular culture is either explicitly racist or does not mention black people at all (and is therefore implicitly racist), of course the racist art form premised on white people finding so much value in black culture (even if the value they find is not what black people would have called valuable themselves) is going to be incredibly popular with black people. And is it so hard to imagine the appeal of standing on a stage dressed as the object of desire of people who systemically hate you?
But as easy as it is to see the appeal, it’s also then easy to understand why the most egregiously racist components of black minstrelsy fell out of favor as black people gained control of their own representations in popular culture. After all, it is racist and relies on demeaning stereotypes. Of course, when other, less problematic, representations of black people became available, people preferred them.
Still, for a time, it was incredibly popular, both because the bits were funny, the songs beloved, and the insult of blackface muted by the twisted confession of envy that it represented. Yes, it was racist, but what popular culture wasn’t? Blackface was demeaning, but in the hands of black artists, it was also more than that. Black performers in blackface recognized that the culture portrayed by performers in blackface was black culture (or a fantasy of it)—which meant that culture had value, was something worth looking at, even to the very white people who, when they weren’t sitting in the audience, were denying that black people had any worth.
It’s little wonder, then, that its remnants linger on. Blackface minstrelsy was the popular culture for most people for at least half our country’s existence —where our comedy came from, where we heard and learned our favorite songs, and where a type of fundamental “American” sound in music was codified (including banjos and later the Blues)—and there’s still a lot of cultural resonance. And it’s little wonder that those remnants continue to be a source of controversy and pain—because it was racist and demeaning. That’s the legacy of blackface minstrelsy—a source of great pleasure that still resonates in our time AND a source of great pain, which we are still grappling with.
It’s always bugged me — even as a teen four decades ago — when Hollywood blackface examples popped on TV. Even the film stereotype “National Lampoon” magazine once referred to as “the comical scrawny negro” bugged me — you, know, the bug-eyed black character actually played by a black guy.
It also bugged me when Hollywood tapped a non-Asian to play an Asian character. For example, John Wayne as Genghis Khan; Boris Karloff as Fu Manchu; David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine in the “Kung Fu” TV show (picked over Bruce Lee, no less!), etc.
But it even bugs me when a straight person plays a GLBT person, and vice versa. Or when an Irish guy plays an Italian, or when a Christian person plays a Muslim, or when a man plays a woman (or vice versa).
Or when… well, you get the idea.
I guess I like authenticity, and what is more authentic than actually walking in one’s own shoes, rather that some pretender attempting to walk in the shoes of another.
That’s why I always liked Audie Murphy in his war roles, but when he played in westerns, it left me cold.
It’s funny you bring authenticity up, because I think there’s an argument to be made that the thing that makes us most uncomfortable about minstrelsy is not its racism (or not just its racism) but that it just looks so hokey and fake. The idea that anyone could have been fooled by white minstrels in blackface into thinking that those men were black or that they were somehow seeing “real” black culture is just cringe-inducing. And yet, if we take their own words at face-value, they were regularly so fooled.
There’s a weird kind of cultural dissonance–the people who enjoyed blackface minstrelsy were enough like us that we can enjoy things they thought were funny and enjoy the music they loved, but they were different enough from us that the blackface make-up didn’t look too fake to them, where as to us, yes, I agree, it just looks ridiculously inauthentic.
All vaudeville looks hokey now, though, doesn’t it?
Blackface may look inauthentic, but white performers imitating black styles still tends to read as authentic and cool. The Rolling Stones or Elvis or the Beastie Boys still make sense…
I’m still interested in what it means for blacks to wear blackface– in particular cause I’m writing about black metal corpsepaint as a form of whiteface that is now being appropriated worldwide, Is blackface on a black person a form of reverence, mockery ogf whites, mockery of blacks, or what?
One must be careful when including hip-hop in all this, especially name-checking the Beastie Boys. One, I’m not sure what it means that they “make sense.” Two, hip-hop is a subculture tied to African-American culture but also separate and apart from it. The Beastie Boys were there when hip-hop was a localized thing and very quickly moved from participants to innovators in that subculture. One can’t say the same about Elvis, who really only returned to Black music as a reference point when it became a financial imperative (“In the Ghetto”) or Vanilla Ice, who may be the most notorious modern White minstrel.
I suppose within hip-hop, being White is not in fact an indicator of inauthenticity, though there seems to be a lingering presumption that it is. It’s why Mr. Van Winkle put forth this elaborate fake history (or why Rick Ross did as well) to get over the authenticity hump.
Well…I think Betsy’s saying that blackface is in part an entertainment trope; that is, you wear it because other people have worn it. So it doesn’t have to be incredibly thought through.
She’s also arguing that blacks wearing blackface is an acknowledgement, or appropriation, of a white tradition of seeing blacks as authentic.
From the other thread, you seemed to be suggesting that blackface could be used as a mockery of whites…which seems plausible, but I just don’t actually see much of a tradition of that. There are some instances — Spike Lee’s anti-blackface blackface film, for example. But I don’t really think that’s what Bert Williams or Louis Armstrong or Flavor Flav or Zora Neale Hurston were doing.
Noah, yes and yes. That’s my favorite part of Love & Theft, where Lott traces what’s going on in white blackface minstrelsy straight through to the Beats and Norman Mailer and Elvis. It really helps to think of it that way–gives you some sense of just what the appeal is and the dynamic at play in the fear of a real black man somehow sneaking onto stage in blackface. Lott goes overboard about the eroticism of the whole thing, but not that far overboard.
Bert, I think it’s about pride in the face of oppression–white people say that black people are worthless, but white people find value in “black” culture (there’s a lot of argument about just how authentically black whiteface minstrelsy was), and black minstrels then stood on stage in the very costume of blackness whites gave value to. It exposes the white society’s lie of finding no value in black culture. And I think there was a real pleasure there–along with the pain of being portrayed in such racist ways. I don’t think you can uncouple those things.
I’m really curious to see how your whiteface piece ends up. It’s interesting because it directly ties into black culture? I mean, when white black metal bands put that face on, that tradition goes straight back to Baron Samedi, whether they know it or not. At least the James Bond version, if not the actual lwa. King Diamond makes that connection explicit, right?
The Beastie Boys are awesome. But saying they are somehow more authentic than Elvis is weird. Elvis was tying into a very long tradition of black/white borrowing and musical collaboration/sharing, going from Jimmie Rodgers to Western swing to hillbilly boogie. There’s certainly some sense in which he was borrowing..but there’s also a real sense in which he was performing his own music. That’s why Elvis didn’t compulsively namecheck black artists the way the Rolling Stones or Clapton did; he didn’t feel like he needed to do that to be authentic, I’m pretty sure.
Which isn’t to say that Elvis wasn’t mimicking black performance styles. He was. But so were the Beastie Boys. The fact that they were innovators and early adopters doesn’t change the fact that they were also being cool in part by adopting (an image of) black male masculinity.
Of course, black rappers also adapt an image of black male masculinity in order to be cool…
Which does bring up the gender thing. Of course there’s Aunt Jemima characters. but the performative nature of masculinity really lines up well with what people are saying about blackface as reverence.
Eminem– not an early adopter, but far more integrated into mainstream hip-hop than the Beastie Boys (or Vanilla Ice)– widely considered the greatest freestyler of all time. And compares himself to Elvis.
I should really research King Diamond. He’s an interesting guy.
The Beastie Boys are hip-hop, there’s no need for them to be integrated into the “mainstream” of it. It’s a mistake to think that the Beasties were imitating a “black” form of masculinity, or even what might have been their perception of it. You look at their earliest visual work, it was straight out of 80’s teen comedies and hair metal. Nor did their music, which mostly referenced metal bands in sampling and so on.
Hypermasculinity and rap music didn’t always go hand in hand. Early groups had female rappers along with them (Jazzy Four plus One More) and female rappers put out records (The Sequence). Most lyrics were pretty PG rated. There were a few exceptions like Blowfly but misogyny didn’t become a feature (or a bug) until the 90s. Maybe LICENSED TO ILL had something to do with that. Quick, name the first rappers to have women dancing in a cage on-stage with them.
Suggested reading is Pete (Nice) Nash’s views on being a White rapper at that time in the early 80s in NYC.
RE: The kang and authenticity
What was Elvis doing early on that was really “his own music?” Those sessions with Sam Phillips picking out songs for him to try on? It is my understanding that they farted around with CW and gospel until they found a style that worked for him, that sold records.
Whatever Elvis did in the beginning of his career didn’t stick with him. It is not an opinion. He started doing movies and became “Elvis.” I suppose then he was authentic to being “Elvis.”
Elvis was never considered part of Black culture the way the Beasties were accepted as a part of hip-hop culture.
The problem with comparing the two is that they existed in a different era.
Elvis was doing his own music because hillbilly musicians had been covering black musical styles (and to some extent vice versa) for decades. One of the things hillbilly musicians did was cover black musical styles. They did it often enough that it starts to become really unclear that the black musical styles weren’t also their musical styles. Also, black and white musical styles drew from many of the same sources in any case; they were originally separated as a marketing convenience into race and hillbilly records.
I don’t really see what it matters that Elvis didn’t stay with his original style. Are you saying he would have been more authentic if he did? By that logic the Beastie Boys would have been more authentic if they stayed with hardcore, right? The whole argument just seems kind of silly to me….
And yes, of course there are also female rappers. I didn’t say that all hip hop was misogynist. I said that the Beastie Boys, and also many black male rappers (misogynist or not) use an image of black male masculinity as a touchstone. I’ll stick with that…and I’ll also reiterate that it doesn’t change the fact that the Beastie Boys are great.
Some things you’ve written make me think you’ve just missed some things. I wasn’t trying to educate you that there are female rappers, I included some very early and rarely known examples to show how different rap music was in the beginning from what it is now, or commonly accepted as being (for instance, that there was some golden age where all rap music was transcendent in the mid 90s).
You can stick with your idea about the Beastie Boys, but you’d be wrong. It was part of why we (young Black men in ’85) so readily accepted them; whatever it was that they were doing, many of us didn’t see them as mimicking or copying or faking any image of Black men. They really were part of the creation of the hip-hop subculture.
That’s why I add that it’s tough making a direct “Who was more authentic” comparison between the two, because in someways the kind of authenticity the Beasties displayed might not have been possible for Elvis even if he wanted to (living in Brooklyn, being the only White act on a nationwide tour with Black musicians). The biggest issue is, it isn’t clear he’d have wanted it. Yes, he gave props to Black musicians, but he also aligned himself with Nixon.
Would they have been more authentic if they’d stuck with hardcore (punk I assume you mean)? Authentic to punk, since that’s what they started with. Authentic to themselves? Maybe. Authentic to hip-hop, no.
Is Thicke more authentic than Timberlake? Are either engaging in minstrelsy?
Actually, the first time I heard the Beastie Boys was when I first got into hip-hop, breakdancing in the mid-’80s in middle school. “She’s On It” was on the “Krush Groove” soundtrack, and me and my friends made fun of it– it’s a pretty boneheaded song (in an appropriately Ramones-y spirit), but I didn’t get that kind of humor then. I also hated “Fight For Your Right” when it came out– sounded like white jock music (which it partially is).
But I grew to appreciate them, after I started listening to classic rock, and they also released Paul’s Boutique, which is one of the greatest hip-hop records ever.
I don’t think rap (even female rap) was ever not about black masculinity, but hip-hop ended up being kind of a window on the expression of black masculinity as it changed. Rock and white rap are just a testament to how, musically, white masculinity in America (and ou cultural empire) caught up in our proximity to black masculinity.
“I suppose within hip-hop, being White is not in fact an indicator of inauthenticity, though there seems to be a lingering presumption that it is. ”
The same could be said about jazz music.
Jazz is a black invention, but I really don’t think it would have existed without Western (white) classical music and orchestra instruments. The same might be said about blues, rap, etc.
The existence of white media and forms, that is, not classical music and instruments in particular. You understand.
“because in someways the kind of authenticity the Beasties displayed might not have been possible for Elvis even if he wanted to (living in Brooklyn, being the only White act on a nationwide tour with Black musicians)”
You’re assuming that integration is only urban. That’s not really the case. The Lovings, the couple whose Supreme Court case outlawed bands on interracial marriage, were from rural Virginia…and that’s not a blip. Elvis came out of a rural musical culture that was quite integrated, and had been integrated for generations. (Jimmie Rodgers recorded with Louis Armstrong, for example; Moon Mullican played hillbilly boogie with otherwise all-black bands for all-black audiences, if what I’ve read is correct.)
Elvis was still imitating back styles, of course (not just in song selection, but very much in performance.) But I don’t think he would have necessarily seen those black styles as someone else’s, or as more authentic than his imitation of them, exactly. For better and worse, as Betsy points out.
Lots of white people were vital to the early creation of jazz…but I think it still makes sense to see, say, Bennie Goodman as signalling his cool through his association with black subculture…which doesn’t at all detract from his very honorable decision to work in an integrated context (same with Wanda Jackson, a wonderful rockabilly performer who toured with an integrated band.)
I guess my point is that I don’t think mimicking or adopting images of black masculinity would have prevented you from really being an authentic part of the hip hop subculture. On the contrary, as Bert says, creating images of black masculinity seems like an important part of what hip hop was about, for worse sometimes, but certainly for better as well.
Haven’t really heard much Thicke, but Justin Timberlake would pretty much evaporate if he didn’t have Michael Jackson as a touchstone. So…if minstrelsy is about demonstrating affection for black culture through imitation (which is at least part of what it’s about, I think), then, yes, I’d say Timberlake is in that tradition.
Oh…and I think Bert is right that white masculinity in popular music is almost inextricably linked/obsessed with black masculinity. Black styles have just been the preferred signals of masculinity for white people for so long — going on a century at this point.
First, I’ll note that my parents are from rural Mississippi, places that I’ve visited often. Further, my maternal Grandmother is 1/2 European (Scot). I assume nothing about integration, nor at what costs that integration may have come. I’m also aware of the legends of Elvis’s musical education. That Elvis’ career started in a place where that “sharing” occurred doesn’t say much about his authenticity as an individual artist.
He could, and did, chose to avoid it. Ultimately, he was much less a creative force than the group with whom we’re comparing him.
RE: Beasties circa 1985
“I also hated “Fight For Your Right” when it came out– sounded like white jock music (which it partially is).”
White jock music, and not Black masculinity, which is exactly what we saw it as (I was already in college in 85 when I first heard them). It was what we expected White rap to sound like back then.
We didn’t think of rap music as particularly masculine or informed by masculinity in 79 when we first heard the music. It was just another form of dance music. The artists were trying to monetize what they were doing, and so they were presenting themselves as were other Black musicians of the day; shiny sequined gear like the Ohio Players or refashioned punk/new wave clothing like Rick James and Prince. If anything, there was an emphasis on the sexuality these artists presented, and especially in the case of James and Prince, there was more than a little androgyny present.
The Lee-on-my-legs, my Adidas days were a few years away. And that was basically born out of Russell Simmons telling his charges to dress like your fan base, maybe a little flyer, but make yourself relatable.
The way the discussion is trending, it’s very much like what B was saying was so messed up about minstrelsy. Some people have an idea of what constitutes Black masculinity and whether that is accurately reflected, and I look at that and recoil.
The Beasties also abandoned most of the misogyny and party-boy shtick fairly quickly.
It’s kind of hard to call what Elvis did for most of the sixties “authentic” by any definition of the term, given that he was taking marching orders from Col. Parker and blowing where the winds of movie-driven commerce took him.
I don’t really care, as I like sixties Elvis (not as much as 50’s Elvis, but that should go without saying)….and I think “authenticity” is a canard anyway.
The essay also rightly notes that blackface is not simply “demonstrating affection towards black culture through imitation.” That may be part of it…but it’s also the racist exploitation of stereotypes to make a buck. If Timberlake is doing BOTH things, he’s participating in some kind of blackface or following that trajectory, anyway. If it’s really just the former (and I’m not sure imitating one fairly distinctive and popular performer is the same as tapping into the history of blackface)…then I’m not sure it makes sense to say he’s doing any kind of blackface.
And Mark, I think it’s completely fair to say that the Beasties “white jock” music isn’t really any reflection of black masculinity…but I also think it’s fair to say it’s how white boys/men perceive(d) black masculinity.
And if there’s one thing linked as much to (white perceptions of) black masculinity as popular music, it’s sports…so the whole claim that it’s “jock” music doesn’t separate it from that charge.
eric b:
I used the term because it has been introduced in the discussion. I didn’t find it a very accurate description of their sound. Some of my friends referred to their sound as “White boy music,” frankly.
“Some people have an idea of what constitutes Black masculinity and whether that is accurately reflected, and I look at that and recoil.”
How black masculinity exists as a trope has very little to do with who black men are or aren’t. But the trope is what the trope is, for better or in most cases worse. I agree that that is more than a little repulsive…which, as Betsy says, is part of the unpleasant legacy of minstrelsy.
And I agree with Bert that the first album is jock music in a lot of ways…and with Eric that that can pretty easily be seen as a white male performance of an image of black masculinity. The fact that that white male performance read as quintessentially white rather than black to both black and white listeners is again not especially surprising.
“That Elvis’ career started in a place where that “sharing” occurred doesn’t say much about his authenticity as an individual artist.”
Authenticity is about where you come from and what your relationship is to the music you’re making, right? So where he came from seems like it is pretty relevant. The blues he was singing was as much his music as hip hop was the Beastie Boys’, I think — an observation which cuts various ways, depending on how you want to look at it.
“He could, and did, chose to avoid it. Ultimately, he was much less a creative force than the group with whom we’re comparing him.”
I love the Beastie Boys, but to suggest that Elvis was less of a creative force than they were seems like a stretch. He’s one of the most important figures in the creation of rock and roll; his particular fusion of hillbilly music and blues was just enormously influential for decades. Plus those early singles are fantastic; some of my favorite music ever (as is Paul’s Boutique, for that matter.)
Elvis never worked to integrate his band, or to reach out to black performers that I know of. In that sense, his career was certainly less honorable than the Beastie Boys’. But that’s neither here nor there in terms of his creativity or importance. Lots of horrible people have made great art.
In terms of Justin Timberlake…I think it’s possible to see him as not just imitating but ripping off Michael Jackson, right? His imitation is less creative and more puerile than Elvis’ take on his own black sources, I think. He is collaborating in an integrated context, of course…but the fact that Timbaland is the one who appears to bring the talent while Timberlake brings rote imitation doesn’t necessarily redound entirely to his credit. And again the imitation of Jackson is definitely admiring, but is also supposed to be validating and authenticating.
I wouldn’t call it a minstrel performance…but it’s in the geneology of minstrel performance. This is what happened to minstrel performance…which is good, because Justin Timberlake is way less racist than white’s in blackface. But the racial, and racist, dynamics haven’t been entirely erased, for all that.
I’ve got a few Timberlake tunes in my hard drive, but don’t listen to him much, so I won’t go too far down that rabbit hole. Interesting that he’s launching this big tour with Jay-Z…pretty much the authenticest (not a word) of authentic hip-hoppers these days.
I wish I had read the previous book by Yuval Taylor (co-writer of the book reviewed here). It’s called Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music. It’s entirely possible that it has something to do with this discussion.
I’ve never understood the point of authenticity. Elvis undoubtedly loved the r’n’b, gospel, and blues music he heard coming from African-American sources in his life. He also clearly loved country music (which, as Noah points out, itself always had a strong relationship with African-American sources). And he clearly loved Dean Martin – just ask the man, if you can find him. At that, there have been many tales of disc jockeys and even audiences being surprised Elvis was white when they first actually saw him after hearing his early records. So, was he working in the minstrel tradition? Is it minstrelsy to borrow from another culture in the service of your own art? I’m not sure the answers are cut and dried, even within Betsy’s entirely accurate statement that minstrelsy is “it is racist and demeaning AND it is about a deep fantasy of how awesome it is to be black.” Elvis probably took some pride in the times people thought he was black – but I don’t think it was ever his goal. It was Sam Phillips, not Elvis, who said he could make a million dollars with a white singer who sounded black.
As for the Beastie Boys, I’m surprised nobody pointed out that they came out of punk rock, a culture with virtually no interest in African-American forms (despite the best efforts of the Clash, who were already considered old and irrelevant by the time the Beasties came along). They seem to have come to hip-hop on a lark, as a goof, then quickly fell in love with it. They were certainly accepted soon enough as part of the culture, though they had probably more minstrelsy in them than Elvis. They also happened to be enormously talented, obvious even when they were being punk/jock/assholes on the first album.
Next question – where do the contemporary soul revivalists running around the country these days fit in to this discussion? Are JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound carrying on a minstrel tradition of sorts when an African-American singer covers Wilco in a vocal style long since considered archaic by the African-American culture at large?
I need to read Taylor’s earliest book; good call.
I haven’t heard JC Brooks…but there’s always this interesting tension around black performers looking back to earlier styles, precisely because, as you say, older black styles tend to end up associated with white nostalgists. On the one hand, you get folks like R. Crumb claiming that he understands black people better than black people understand themselves because he likes old blues; on the other hand, you get Sharon Jones having to field questions about how she feels playing for white audiences.
“I’m surprised nobody pointed out that they came out of punk rock, a culture with virtually no interest in African-American forms”
What? There’s Bad Brains and “post punk” groups like Pere Ubu in the States and then there’s just about every British punk from the 70s through the 80s.
One thing that seems to be missing from this discussion is the reason I listen to Elvis and the music of Emmett Miller and some other blackface musicians or used to listen to Beastie Boys: they made great music, regardless of ideology. I never thought as a young metalhead “how cool it is to be black,” I just really got into rap when I first heard Public Enemy, Ice T and the like. I suspect that many people listen to it out musical enjoyment, not because of what it says to social critics about black masculinity (not that that stuff isn’t important or worth looking into, but it’s secondary). Arthur Crudup and Big Mama Thornton are pretty good, but they’re no Elvis. And it’s the music under the racist paint in minstrelsy that probably drives a lot of the interest there (at least that’s why I listen to it).
“He’s one of the most important figures in the creation of rock and roll; his particular fusion of hillbilly music and blues was just enormously influential for decades.”
But it isn’t *his* fusion. He popularized it for majority audiences. It isn’t his. Further, Elvis has two songwriting credits. There’s some debate as to the depth of his creative contribution to the songs he did make hits, one could argue his phrasing and so on made some of these songs hits. One could also argue that he borrowed his phrasing as well.
Again, we’re comparing two eras, one where popular singers relied on songwriters and another where we expect artists to be the creative force.
IMO his influence on rock music colors our perceptions of what he actually did as an artist. No one can argue he wasn’t one of the largest figures of that era and that his impact on popular culture lingers, certainly longer than the Beasties will (probably), for example. He found success in another medium that makes him an even larger figure. But no, he wasn’t the creative artist that they grew into.
“The fact that that white male performance read as quintessentially white rather than black to both black and white listeners is again not especially surprising.”
Of course it isn’t “surprising” but this does need some clarification given the context of this discussion. When “Hold it Now” hit, it was widely assumed that the Beastie Boys were Black. Guys I knew didn’t discover they were White until after LICENSED TO ILL. Still, it wasn’t that they read the performance as White, they read, correctly, that the Beasties were bringing their influences to bear on rap music. So it wasn’t that the Beastie Boys were performing “White boy music,” it’s that they were using “White boy music” in rap music. The fusion wasn’t lost on my cohort. They received the Beasties as rappers, no question.
There are pretty clear examples of pure mimicry of a cardboard figure of Black masculinity or culture being prohibitive of being accepted by receivers of rap music/hip hop culture. We’ve touched on one, Mr Van Winkle. It is one of the many things punk and rap music share, the authenticity test (are you really punk? Did that band sellout? those are similar to questions hip hop asked of its participants and artists).
Speaking of which, yes, we noted just in passing that the Beastie Boys began as punks (more accurately that the members all played in punk bands at one time or another). I find it curious though that you say punk had no interest in African-American culture then mention the Clash (then don’t mention Bad Brains, Oi! etc)
This long thread began because I disagree with the notion that the Beastie Boys began doing what one might interpret as posturing in a perceived style of Black masculinity. It was pretty clear to us that they were simply being themselves, we received their visual work as antics, not posing or posturing. That simply isn’t what they were doing, and that they didn’t allowed them the acceptance they received by that very discerning audience.
I saw them during the Raising Hell tour. I was already a fan but a lot of people still didn’t know them.
Yes, punk went in many different directions. I can only assume that Mr Pick is referencing bands that weren’t influenced (that much) by Ska like The Stooges or The Ramones or Patti Smith and not what many of us think of as punk bands. But even a band like Black Flag were interested in forms of Black music (after Rollins joined especially)
Charles, you consistently seem to feel that one can separate out musicality from social context. I don’t agree that you can. People don’t compartmentalize their heads like that. I don’t believe you do either…if you did, then you wouldn’t care about authenticity, right?
I agree that punk has long had an interest in black musical styles…like every other form of white american music just about (even extreme metal is pretty clearly looking over its shoulder at black styles, if only to reject them.)
Mark, Elvis is a really original performer, to my ears. He’s certainly referencing both black and white sources, as well as black and white mashups like hillbilly boogie. But Mystery Train in his version is eerie and beautiful in a way that’s quite different than any of his sources. It’s somewhat like Mississippi John Hurt maybe…another performer who very much mixed black and white sources.
I also don’t agree that songwriting in itself is a sign of greater creativity, necessarily. That seems fairly arbitrary; Louie Armstrong or Billie Holiday aren’t as great as the Beastie Boys because they didn’t write most of their material? That doesn’t seem to make much sense (I mean, I like the Beastie Boys as much as all of these artists, probably, but who wrote which songs isn’t really either here or there it doesn’t seem like.)
I think Steve’s right that the Beastie Boys’ first album is not only a frat-boyification of rap, but also in some ways a mockery of rap, or a clowning around in the rap genre. And, yeah, the tradition of minstrelsy seems relevant, for them as for Flavor Flav — which is no knock on Flav, who is also great.
But the idea that the Beastie Boys were “simply being themselves” seems pretty slippery. They were performers; they even adopted different names on stage, right? And their first album is schtick from front to back — while their second is in no small part the accomplishment of their amazing producers. People who get up on stage are always projecting an image. You can talk about how they put that image together and what it means to them and how it relates to their music, but to argue that there is no performance in performance doesn’t seem convincing to me.
Not really, Noah, I tend to support an authentic bond to the music over other, more extraneous stuff (interest in capital, the proper political message, etc.). Nothing about that means you can’t listen and enjoy the music of some ideologically heinous musician without buying into that ideology or that ideology being the primary reason you’re listening to the music. It’s really pretty easy to separate that stuff. Children do it all the time. Even you seem to be able to enjoy music with a message you don’t like.
The influence of African American music on early American punk is often overlooked. The Velvets were heavily indebted to free jazz artists like Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman, especially on their first two albums, and by the third album Lou Reed was incorporating more of his doo-wop influences on tunes like “Candy Says.” And from the first album their rhythms often echoed rock and blues pioneers like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry with Moe Tucker’s Olatunji influence mixed in. Patti Smith has also spoken frequently about Coltrane’s influence on her work (and Hendrix features prominently in her autobiography).
That interest in free jazz with a mix of funk and soul was also essential for the Stooges and the MC5, a mixture which made its way to Cleveland in (as Charles already mentioned) Pere Ubu and, even earlier, Rocket from the Tombs, with David Thomas and Peter Laughner. Even Husker Du’s Zen Arcade has traces of the free jazz influence, especially on closing track “Reoccuring Dreams.”
And the first time I heard the Sex Pistols (which was the same day I bought Fear of a Black Planet on tape, now that I think of it), I remember thinking, wait, Steve Jones is just playing a bunch of very fast Chuck Berry licks…! Which of course I then tried to learn on my acoustic guitar. They sounded much better when I finally got an electric and a fuzz box.
I mean, skinheads seem to listen to music with ideology first, music second in mind. Seems a bit of a reach to make them the norm.
I doubt very much that skinheads (either racist or anti-racist) would say that ideology was the only thing they were listening for. I also doubt that most people’s objection to racist skinhead music is primarily about formal musical qualities.
If you don’t think attitude and cool has a lot to do with how people interact with popular music, I probably can’t help you. (And no, I don’t think there’s anything “inauthentic” or wrong with the fact that attitude and cool have something to do with how people interact with their music.)
One of the things that makes this discussion difficult (and interesting), too, is that the lines between black culture and white culture are much blurrier than they were back at the height of minstrelsy. So, it’s hard for me to see Justin Timberlake or even Elvis as being like modern minstrels. After all, I don’t think either of them is/was attempting to present “authentic” black culture to their white audience.
But I think, yes, of course, that they are obvious descendants of the minstrel tradition. But I think that’s an important distinction to make.
R. Crumb, though, I’d like to think more about. I think, if there’s a contemporary artist working in the white blackface minstrel tradition, it’s him. He really is trying to portray for his mostly white audience something he believes to be authentic about black culture, something which he obviously deeply loves (even, as noted, to the point where he positions himself as knowing more about black culture than black people).
And his art is shocking and upsetting to people. We recently had a little bit of outrage in the Nashville community when people thought our local brewery, Yazoo, had put out a compilation of old time hokum songs with an incredibly racist cover. Of course, it was Yazoo Records, and R. Crumb on the cover.
It just illustrated for me that you have to be really familiar with R. Crumb’s work and the tradition he’s working in to cease to see just how alarming and off-putting his imagery can be.
And yet, who would doubt that he loves the Blues?
On another note, are you guys familiar with Pete Peterson’s *Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity*? He’s talking specifically about country music (obviously), but that subtitle pretty much tells you what the genius of the book is. If we’re going to talk about authenticity in music, it’s important to consider how much our sense of authenticity is based on performance. In other words, what feels authentic to us is just as fake as anything else.
I always thought Pete’s book had broader implications–especially for hip-hop, which also stresses the importance of “keeping it real.”
Oh…and I enjoy art with all sorts of messages, but that’s different than saying that the messages don’t matter. In your quest for unideological purity, you’ve promulgated an incredibly simplistic vision of ideology — not to mention an incredibly simplistic ideology.
And you don’t have children, right? Because the idea that children don’t react to the messages in music is ridiculous on its face if you’ve ever interacted with children listening to music.
Brian, those are great points about punk’s black roots. Worth noting too that Reed’s cool was very much about referencing black sources.
Hey white boy, what you doing uptown
Hey white boy, you chasing our women around ?
Nothing in that response is relevant to what I wrote, Noah.
I also didn’t say messages don’t matter, did I?
If your kid only gravitates towards stuff with a leftist or PC-bent, then I’d be surprised.
Noah, at this point, just don’t argue against something I haven’t said. My argument isn’t that X is “greater” than Y because Y wrote all their own material. We have never been discussing whether the Beastie Boys were “greater” than Elvis. I mean, talk about arbitrary! Greater? We may as well start arguing whether Biggie was “greater” than Pac.
We began with this notion of whether the Beasties were attempting to portray Black masculinity to appear cool, to which I reply they were very conscientiously avoiding that, and that is how many hiphop fans received them in the early years.
We’ve gotten far afield of that, but that was the jump off of this discussion. And part of the reason of that is that we’ve veered into these defenses of Elvis as a great and influential artist. Please note that I’ve never said he was neither, and in fact acknowledged his influence. I’m sure you’d agree that an artist need not be particularly creative to be either one of those things. I’ve not said that when I was a very young kid I was a big admirer, exposed as I was to him living down here in TN. That I think the Beastie Boys (or the Beatles or Lou Reed or 9th Wonder) are more creative artists than he was doesn’t change my opinion of him as a cultural figure.
I’ll accept that you might interpret I believe that there’s no performance in performance but that certainly is not what it means when one says an artist is “simply being themselves.” Rappers try to separate themselves from performance all the time when there’s controversy, but some don’t accept that.
The joking and clowning the Beasties did is just part of hip-hop. Flav wasn’t the only non-Beastie Boy to clown on record. The rap skit was an imperative on records throughout the 90s. The Native Tongue crews were infamous for it. Even Cube had jokes, gallows humor, on AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. The Beastie Boys weren’t clowning on rap music or other rappers, they were clowning on themselves, which further reinforces my point about their presentation of themselves.
Lou Reed also has a song, “I Wanna Be Black”–ironic, but probably true nevertheless.
Anyway, there’s little doubt that British punk, especially, was heavily influenced by Reggae, Ska, Dancehall, etc. Dick Hebdige’s book Subculture: The Meaning of Style lays that influence bare….Plus, it’s a great book.
AUthenticity seems to be the main issue in every book about pop music (I’ve read a bunch in the last couple months for a project). I recommended Theodore Gracyk’s book “I Wanna Be Me” to Noah recently…but Gracyk includes a very interesting discussion of how ideology influences enjoyment of music (or often doesn’t). He talks, for instance, about feminists who love “cock rock” a la the (misogynist) Rolling Stones, etc. Obviously, it’s not a straightforward, “We like artists with our political views”—Maybe we’re more likely to belt out the lyrics though.
Charles, my kid loves music that is silly, or that has a story or some other link that he can tie into. It’s certainly not just about abstract formal qualities.
He is quite able to dislike art because it’s racist or sexist though.
And again in these discussions, Charles…it’s really difficult to figure out what you’re saying because what you’re saying is pretty much completely incoherent. You say authenticity matters, yet deny that ideology should have an effect on appreciation. Of course you can deny that my responses are on point; you just back and fill to whichever side of your contradictory argument is best suited to make your point. Leaving me not much to do except shrug….
Mark, when you say that Elvis is less creative than the Beastie Boys, that sounds like a qualitative assessment to me.
“The Beastie Boys weren’t clowning on rap music or other rappers, they were clowning on themselves”
I have to say, I don’t see that first Beastie Boys record as particularly self-denigrating. But we can agree to disagree.
In that vein…I have to say, I loved “Licensed to Ill” then…and I still love it now. I’m not fond of the misogyny, but they were great, and funny, rappers, even then…and I like the heavy metal/guitar fusion with hip hop…just as I did when Run DMC was doing it. Fond memories of ping pong in friend’s back yard with DMC and/or the Beasties playing.
Ahh…Charles I’m getting too cranky. Sorry about that. I know you’re still working out where authenticity fits in your take on these things, which is totally reasonable.
Eric, I should read that book too….
I don’t think it’s all that odd for feminists to like cock rock. The joy of grabbing the phallus for one’s own (whether one is male or female) is a pretty obvious rush, and not one that has to be incongruent with feminism. (See Michael Arthur’s interview with Corinne Halbert from today.)
There’s some logic there…but I’m not sure that’s the assessment Gracyk makes, or not fully. Frequently, there’s a tendency, I think, to completely ignore most lyrics, unless they are thrust in your face.
For instance, the Stones’ Midnight Rambler is apparently about a sexual predator…something I certainly never knew or paid any attention to despite hearing the song innumerable times because Jagger slurs and mumbles the lyrics (except for “have you heard about the Midnight Rambler”) so much that they’re mostly incoherent. (A strategy he admitted to being a conscious choice, apparently).
On the other hand, Guns n’ Roses racist/homophobic “One In A Million” has the vocals so clear and front in the mix that it’s daring you to like the song anyway if you don’t hold similar opinions. It’s a pretty good riff, but I really can’t bring myself to listen to it.
Gracyk also talks interestingly about X’s rape and abuse song “Johnny Hit and Run Pauline,” which was meant as an attack on misogyny and on “rape culture”–They stopped playing it when they realized folks in the audience were chanting it and pumping their fists in favor of the rapes/assaults depicted.
Irony, role playing, and characterization rarely come across in a pop song, in which audiences tend to assume that the “speaker” is the singer/group, and not some kind of “dramatic monologue” (a la Robert Browning). The problem is compounded by the fact that despite the fact that we tend not to “like” instrumentals (or make them hits), we also tend not to pay much attention to lyrics.
I often think quoting lyrics in pieces/reviews about pop music as if they are meaningful is a mistake…in that often the lyrics are incomprehensible, ignored, or both.
Not always…but often.
You can often hear lyrics pretty clearly in pop songs, I think. And then there’s metal, where you can’t hear the lyrics, but the fanbase is often pretty interested in them anyway.
Re cock rock, I wasn’t even thinking about the lyrics necessarily. That music is just extremely swaggery and coded male, whether you can hear the lyrics or not. (And…fans really do memorize lyrics anyway….)
Guns ‘N’ Roses is maybe more complicated than you’re making out, I think. Folks tend to forget that Slash is black. Which doesn’t mean that Axl couldn’t sing racist lyrics or anything, but there are not a ton of integrated hard rock bands in general, and hair metal bands in particular — I don’t think it’s meaningless either, is I guess the point.
Eric, I could not disagree more. How can one both sing along–which is a great part of the fun–and be ignoring the lyrics?
I think there may be a large minority of people who don’t pay attention to the words, but that’s got to be a minority, still. Otherwise, why wouldn’t we just all listen to instrumentals?
Because it’s part of the rhythm and cadence and melody. The pleasure of participation. Many people sing (or rap) along and get everything all wrong. They don’t really care.
Hey, I agree with Mark! At least partially…I think people like the sound of the human voice a lot, which doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be listening to the lyrics.
Though I think fans often do pay attention to the lyrics. I mean, there is like a whole subset of the internet given over to printing song lyrics. Obviously somebody’s interested in reading them.
Yes, and then I make fun of them. If any of you get in my car, all I’m saying is that you’d damn well better know all the words to “Paul Revere” and be prepared to shout them at the top of your lungs or else I’m leaving you on the side of the road.
Because people who don’t care about lyrics are doing it wrong. My god, does that mean those people get no chills from “Long Black Veil?” That they get in no arguments over what went off the Tallahachee Bridge? That they don’t care that Muddy Waters doesn’t want them to do dishes?
My mind is boggled.
Always down to ride with B.
FWIW, my feminist wife definitely knows every Aerosmith lyric by heart.
I was going to mention Slash’s mixed-race heritage…but, I mean, have you heard One In A Million? I don’t think there’s much room for misinterpretation.
I don’t meant to suggest that lyrics are never important to enjoyment (or singing along, which nobody does more than me…NO SLEEP TIL BROOKLYN!), but that often people are belting out choruses with no real knowledge of the verse lyrics (or getting them hamburgered up when they think they know them).
Many songs have very clear lyrics that are easily parsed and can be sung along to….Many songs do not.
And just because folks are singing along doesn’t mean they are paying attention to what they’re singing ideologically speaking.
Just some personal observations on the lyrics thing. I AM very much a lyrics sort of listener, but even so there are plenty of songs I can sing along to only when they’re playing; in that moment each line (more or less) emerges as the song plays. However, in many instances, I could not sit down the next day and write the lyrics out by memory. I have no idea of how to explain this.
Most folk I know, however, really aren’t that interested in the lyrics, even when they can/do sing along, and don’t really think much about what they actually mean as words. They tend, it seems, to enjoy the sound, the cadence, the rhythm. Even the friend who is arguably the most knowledgeable about music (he worked in the industry for a few years when he was younger, in fact, as an assistant engineer on several records and as a sound technician touring with some artists) is relatively uninterested in lyrics. He and I have discussed this numerous times. He talks repeatedly about how Dylan was of no interest to him when Dylan emerged (he was a teen in the 1960s) because it was all about the words, not the music. Despite being an enormous Beatles fan (I think he must have read every book that’s been written on them), he to this day doesn’t know the lyrics well. He half-jokingly half-ruefully recalls being mercilessly mocked once when he was unable to answer a lyrics-related Beatles trivia question.
So, yes, it does seem true that lyrics need not be a major component for many listeners, even ones who “know” them and sing along. Why else would “Gangnam Style” be a hit, after all?
I forgot to mention that a good early piece of writing on race and American punk is Lester Bangs’ “The White Noise Supremacists” in his collection Psychotic Reactions. Bangs’ focus on Ivan Julian’s experiences with Richard Hell and the Voidoids, especially on the band’s tour supporting the Clash in England, provides interesting insights into the role race and racism played in the CBGBs scene in the 1970s.
Julian and Robert Quine are two more early Punk innovators who drew on a deep well of blues and early rock and soul influences. There’s an inspiring of Hubert Sumlin, Lou Reed, Steve Cropper, and Ayler in their playing. I hear some Sister Rosetta Tharpe in Quine’s leads, too.
Speaking of the Voidoids, Hell’s new memoir, like his other books, is a compelling read, and a good companion piece to books by Patti Smith, Gary Valentine (Lachman), and Cherry Vanilla. The section on Peter Laughner is heartbreaking.
Pretty interesting discussion of One In a Million on Wikipedia actually, with discussion by Slash.
Maybe worth pointing out that not tuning into the lyrics doesn’t necessarily mean that people aren’t able to process other aspects of a bands performance, which can also have content. You don’t have to know what Mick Jagger is saying to be aware that he’s referencing black performance styles; you don’t have to understand every cock rock lyric to know that those folks are talking about sex…
Man, I’ve read many H.U. threads, never participated in one. 30 posts after I last had a chance to check in. The only way to comment is to put something up after each one that has something that begs reply.
Charles Reece and Mark Mays both point out that I forgot about Bad Brains when saying punk didn’t have any use for African-American culture. Yes, it’s the exception that proves the rule, and yes, the role of reggae in punk would require a much larger discussion (though reggae was not making any inroads into contemporary black audiences at the time). I stand by my perception at the time, as a slightly older participant in the hardcore culture of the early 80s, that punk in the U.S. was 99% a reaction to the white dominant culture by the suburban youth of the time. There was a strain of racism – anyone with a complete Maximum Rock’n’Roll collection can follow the arguments about White Pride, a band from right here in my home town. But even the explicitly non-racist punks of the time weren’t at all interested in the music being made by the hip hop community. Until the Beastie Boys, who came out of the punk culture but who had connections to hip hop, and who understood it in ways most of their white fans didn’t until later.
Mark Mays, I have to fundamentally disagree with your reading of Elvis Presley as a musician and artist and influence. Writing songs is one talent – communicating every nuance of meaning that’s in the songs, possibly even discovering more than the writer had in mind, is quite another. That’s what Presley did (and, Noah, I would argue that he did it his whole life, though the 60s and 70s material was spottier than the glorious Sun period.) And, he changed the dominant culture in ways we’ve rarely seen since. Sure, he wasn’t the only one, but he was at the very least part of a pantheon of genius which had to include Chuck Berry and Little Richard and probably some others not in my head at the moment. But his creativity was as great or greater (if we really want to get into a ranking argument, which is pretty pointless) as anybody before or since. It just wasn’t a creativity that is recognized by those who insist a singer has to write his or her own material, even if that’s not their strength.
Brian Cremins, and presumably others (including Noah) point out further influences from black musicians on punk. The Velvets probably took more from avant-garde classical of the 60s than punk, but the Stooges and MC5 were very much into avant-jazz. I was still more interested in the hardcore punk scene from which the Beastie Boys arose. In many ways, that scene was more aggressively refusing outside influences than just about any other, including heavy metal. The punk scene was all about do it yourself, which ended up making the music more insular than you’d think. Still, thinking back, the Minutemen were funky as all get out, so maybe I’m forgetting some other bands, too.
You see the phenomenon all the time in non-English speaking countries. In the one I’m most familiar with, Japan, where everyone already (or should already) knows about their appreciation for American rap music (to the point of many people being dismissive of or embarrassed by their own rap artists), fans do know lyrics to some of the songs of your bigger acts, but many don’t know what they mean. They are translated, but . . . insert Coppola movie joke here. Some find it odd as rap is so word-centric, but many people here don’t know what Weezy is on about either.
I’m going to leave Elvis and punk alone for now, seeing as I’ve got 4 decisions left to write today. But I have enjoyed the back and forth.
Yeah; thank you for coming by Mark. It was a really fun discussion.
I will confess that, when the weather’s warm, I like to drive around town singing along to Cypress Hill’s Los Grandes Exitos en Espanol, even though I don’t know Spanish or particularly care for Cypress Hill in English.
So, I do have some sympathy for the “they like how it sounds, and don’t care what it says,” argument.
Just belting out Gangnam Style with my kids in the car. Other than “Hey Sexy Lady,” none of us knows what the hell we’re talking about.
And Dominick…I think everyone (by which I mean myself) “knows” lyrics in this way. In context. If I someon says the first few lines of a lyric, I can complete it without music…up to the next rhyme. After that, I’m pretty much lost. If I hear the song,though, I can pretty much sing along to the whole thing.
Ah, the Minutemen! Good call on their funk and jazz influences. Thanks for reminding me of them, Steve. I think I might have to listen to Double Nickels on the Dime on my commute home tonight.
I’ve been listening to a lot of fIREHOSE recently. They’re amazing.
That’s cool, Noah. Cranky or not, I’ll address this: “You say authenticity matters, yet deny that ideology should have an effect on appreciation.”
I’m not sure what you’re finding incoherent about my position. I think you have to have something like the notion of authenticity to make any actual ideological critique of music, but you don’t have to be concerned with authenticity or ideology to enjoy music as music. To me, talking about ideology without any attempt to get at truth is incoherent. But my point here was that the enjoyment of the music often comes first, and any ideological entanglements supervene on that (teenagers dress like a rock star because they like the music rather than like the music because of the way the star dresses).
And I can perfectly understand why my black friends don’t share my love of David Allen Coe. I have some friends who won’t even listen to Armstrong because of his smiling. I get that, too. I thought I said ideology was important, just that it’s often secondary to why people actually get into music.
A delightful and thought-provoking essay!
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When you know Walt Disney took inspiration from The Jazz Singer when he made “Steamboat Willie,” how do you ever look at Mickey Mouse’s white gloves the same way again?
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Whaaa-a-a-t-t?
Oh, Mickey…how could you?
Do a Google image search for “gloves and top hat” and you’ll see an array of images showing how that combo is synonymous with formal wear and elegance. That it was “blackface” characters (assumed to be low-income) dressing thus on the stage, “aping” their wealthier white “betters,” surely was an important factor in the humor.
From an earlier HU post: “Clements exhibit explores visual roots of racist stereotypes” tells how a little-known early 19th-century cartoonist, Edward Williams Clay, would…
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…craft a visual vocabulary that had tremendous influence through America’s mid-19th century. His cartoons reflected the dubious humor of many Americans in both the North and South who found the idea of black assimilation to be questionable at best — and ludicrous at worst. Clay mocks these aspirations through exaggerated physiological features as well as the ridiculous adoption of clothing and manners.
As Jones and Lewis’ exhibition catalogue says, “Clay’s ideas about race were quickly taken up by others. A countless number of 19th century engravers, lithographers, cartoonists, and illustrators adopted Clay’s visual strategies. They transformed what began as a local look at black life in Philadelphia into a national taxonomy of race.”
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http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/reframing-color-review/
More Clay: http://tinyurl.com/ch8xaxc
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h486.html
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Charles Reece says:
…To me, talking about ideology without any attempt to get at truth is incoherent.
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I’m afraid that for ideologues (as with Theory-heads), mere truth, with all its inconvenient details, complexities and “incoherences,” is an absurd irrelevance. To be attacked or dismissed whenever it contradicts the all-encompassing, all-explaining One True Belief.
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…I have some friends who won’t even listen to Armstrong because of his smiling.
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Hey, he smoked a LOT of pot! That’ll keep you smiling…
http://www.veryimportantpotheads.com/armstrong.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrDSmiDyGk
” But my point here was that the enjoyment of the music often comes first, and any ideological entanglements supervene on that (teenagers dress like a rock star because they like the music rather than like the music because of the way the star dresses).”
Yeah…and as I said, I just don’t think people separate their brains out that way. In this particular case…fashion and style are art forms too. People totally react aesthetically to performance and dress as well as to music. Why wouldn’t they?
I think there’s something off about how aesthetics (the truth of pleasure) are linked to truth (knowledge) and truth (goodness). Which is at the core of my beef with Adorno. Mickey Mouse is based on minstrels, and getting your bloomers in a bunch doesn’t change it. There’s some beautiful work, past and present, that Disney studios put into the world, but it doesn’t change the fact that Disney was anti-Semitic and now his empire is kind of despicable. Or that Dumbo had amazing animation and one of the most racist scenes in mainstream American cinema.
You want to talk about dealing with dissonance, that’s just how it goes. Led Zeppelin ripped off blues musicians, and yet they rule. Neither fact is irrelevant.
Bert, you hit squarely on something I wish I’d brought up in my original post. Because, to me, there’s something about Disney’s most famous racist moments that are also amazing. I rewatched the Dumbo scene and the Jungle Book dance clip while working on this post and both of those moments–and even Zippity-do-da–are, at some level, great. They’re catchy and full of energy and, in each film, among the best moments in those films.
They are also racist and demeaning as all get out.
To me, if you’re trying to get a sense of the attraction to white blackface minstrelsy AND why people hated it right from its inception, those are our closest examples.
I think that’s, in part, what makes it so hard to give up these tropes–or even to decide we should–they are pleasurable. That’s part of what gives them such power. Not just to seduce, but to offend.
I wrote about that in relation to tintin a bit back.
“I just don’t think people separate their brains out that way. In this particular case…fashion and style are art forms too. People totally react aesthetically to performance and dress as well as to music. Why wouldn’t they?”
I’m not saying that people don’t like things for superficial reasons. They certainly do. (“But liking music for what the performer looks like isn’t superficial ….”) But isn’t it possible that many people enjoyed the Culture Club’s music even though they never thought of imitating that look or even particularly appreciated it to begin with. If anything, the widespread popularity of their music led to a larger acceptance of that look. And as the Mickey Mouse example should demonstrate, it’s a genetic fallacy to presume the ideology that led to the creation of some art carries through that art to become it’s primary meaning — or any meaning at all — for the recipient.
Also: Axl Rose’s defenses of “One in a Million” are pretty lame. I would’ve defended the song by asking why is it that songwriters aren’t allowed to write characters just like every other writer in the world? Why is that they have to agree with every sentiment in a song they’ve written? That’s not a defense against the criticism that it’s racist to depict racist characters, of course, but who takes that seriously? (Maybe Spike Lee.)
” But my point here was that the enjoyment of the music often comes first, and any ideological entanglements supervene on that (teenagers dress like a rock star because they like the music rather than like the music because of the way the star dresses).”
Yeah…and as I said, I just don’t think people separate their brains out that way. In this particular case…fashion and style are art forms too. People totally react aesthetically to performance and dress as well as to music. Why wouldn’t they?
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Sure, they can and do, but is it inevitable? I loved punk music as a teen (still do, really) but for the most part loathed the fashion choices associated with it and would no more have adopted any of them than choped off my leg. I distinctly recall how I rolled my eyes in disappointment the first time I saw Joe Strummer with his new mohawk.
I think plenty of people can and do like and appreciate one aspect of a particular musician or musical style without being equally (or at all)enamored of the rest of it.
I more or less came to music through visuals– graphics, fashion, etc. That’s not the case now (I don’t think), and I’m not especially proud of it, but that’s my own particular situation.
When I was a kid, I learned 2 things from Kerrang!: don’t trust the looks and don’t trust rock critics.
Noah, the end of that Tintin piece is brilliant. I want to think on this some more, but just off the top of my head, it seems like you’re exactly stating what’s so pernicious about some racist art–it is aesthetically pleasing to the people who aren’t too off-put by its racism to enjoy it.
And then we get into murky territory. I wouldn’t have any qualms about letting children watch Mickey Mouse for fear that modern Mickey would teach them and then reinforce racial stereotypes without them even realizing it. And I probably wouldn’t think twice (or at least have thought twice before this conversation) about sitting a kid down in front of Dumbo or The Jungle Book.
But how much racial stereotype background noise can a person hear before the background noise starts to seem natural?
I don’t think of myself as an actively racist person (though I guess you don’t meet a lot of people who say “I am a racist, and…”), but I have a lot of stupid assumptions about people that I have had to work really hard to train myself and remind myself to realize are my stupid assumptions and not how the world actually is.
It’s easy for me to see how, when the music’s good, when the story moves you, when the whole thing is designed to entertain YOU, the temptation to just go ahead and see it as an unadulterated good is really strong. I guess, the temptation is to see something beautiful as something truthful.
And it can be difficult, when you’re, say, listening to Robert Plant moaning in your ear like some latter-day fertility god about how you should squeeze his lemon ’til the juice runs down his leg, to see the value in also letting Robert Johnson, with his strange whiny voice and musical stylings that sound utterly bizarre to contemporary ears, moan the same thing. And, hell, I’m sure Robert Plant sounds kind of strange and hilarious to a lot of kids who would hear him for the first time today.
I don’t think anyone should give up Robert Plant (you will pry him from my cold, dead hands), but it’s not enough to just love Led Zeppelin. I think you have to open yourself up to being willing to love the men they stole from.
That’s got to be a way to love them without perpetuating the harm they did, right?
Charles wrote: “…don’t trust rock critics.”
Haha. That’s so true!
Charles, I think it’s not always straightforward how people think about ideology and art…but that’s somewhat different than saying (for example) that people necessarily appreciate the music first and always, and that those who don’t are superficial and/or rock critics and/or to be despised.
Elvis was a great dancer; Michael Jackson was a great dancer; their dancing had enormous influence on their fans. Lady Gaga’s public performance is a lot of what she has to offer (it’s a lot more interesting than her music — to the extent that I’d say liking Lady Gaga for the music, or disliking her for the music, would be the superficial thing way to appreciate her, if anything is). David Bowie and Pink Floyd’s concepts are pretty important to everything they do…as is Britney’s pop void.
If you’re really into pure formal qualities in music, and are nervous around the authenticity claims and image-making, it seems like you should probably just be listening to classical music or something? Though that’s got it’s own mythos too, of course. I just don’t really see any way to this pure realm of aesthetic suchness that you seem to be positing either as ideal or inevitable. I mean, do you think people don’t process ideology or messages in films? Is music different?
“I think plenty of people can and do like and appreciate one aspect of a particular musician or musical style without being equally (or at all)enamored of the rest of it.”
Sure. But that’s somewhat different than saying that they don’t notice the rest of it, or that it doesn’t effect them. Saying, “I like this part and not that,” is not ignoring the bit you don’t like. It’s thinking about it and rejecting it.
Betsy, that’s interesting. I don’t know what I think about the idea that the way to deal with these issues is to like the original…
I think what I was trying to say in that Tintin piece is that there’s a lot of cultural oomph that can go into these racist depictions; there can be a creativity or an investment there which is pleasing, or exciting, or funny, or horrifying. It’s like with H.P. Lovecraft; his whole work is based on anxieties around racism and sexism; it wouldn’t exist without that. It’s the engine driving his work — just like misogyny is the engine driving a lot of Raymond Chandler’s stuff. Those fears and hatreds (and sometimes loves, as with Plant) are really powerful…and can be fertile in terms of art. Which, yeah, is not entirely comfortable.
Mickey Mouse and minstrelsy: ahem. Context: Mickey and his pals are putting on a show, to raise money to save Clarabelle’s house. The show is Uncle Tom; Mickey is Uncle Tom (!).
Manohman. You ever see the Bugs Bunny cartoon where he, a Yankee, tries to cross Yosemite Sam’s Dixie line by performing blackface?
Noah,
I wouldn’t dismiss the whole artform of dance as superficial, but the current mechanized monstrosity that decorates every pop performance at the Grammys to distract the listener from actually listening is something else entirely. A perfect example of pseudoindividualization. Simply renaming it the pop void or having a performer acknowledge their emptiness is just more of the ironic swindle. But, just to bring us back to what I originally said, I don’t believe most listeners are choosing between pseudoindividualism and the pop void when they first hear and see something like the android Britney Spears. Kids probably just find the sound emanations and colorful movements pleasing. A few will begin to develop taste while most others will still be fondly remembering that junk at age 40. An even smaller segment of the few with some sort of developed taste will attempt to come up with socially critical reasons why such junk pervades our culture using terms like ‘pseudoindividualism’ and ‘pop void.’ Mostly though, Britney’s former fans will say, “whatever, I just liked to dance to her music.”
And if the only good thing about an opera were its visuals, then it wouldn’t be a good opera. I’d say the same about Bowie.
Britney’s not ironic. Madonna, maybe, but not Britney. Her emptiness is sincere (maybe because her music’s better than Madonna’s, I dunno.)
Also…interesting how the denigrated thing gets associated with children. It’s almost like comics.
Britney’s music is definitely more interesting than the Rollins Stones’, I think, even if she’s not pandering to your particular demographic, Charles.
Also…I really have a pretty visceral enthusiasm for Britney’s music…way more than I do for the Rolling Stones, who I also like, but who I have to do a lot more work to get myself to appreciate.
I think this is where your commitment to a non-ideological appreciation of music and your desire for authentic music really create static for each other. If what you’re looking for is non-ideological appreciation, on what grounds can you claim that Britney fans don’t really like her music? And why do rock critics who like Britney like her in a more cerebral, debased way than the (much more numerous) rock critics who like the Rolling Stones?
In other words, you’ve got pretty standard critical consensus ideas about which acts are authentic…but you’re trying to say that that authenticity is about a kind of natural appreciation of music which is somehow divorced from criticism or anything but direct appreciation (however you’re defining that.) But if the whole point is what one viscerally likes, on what grounds are your criticizing the things you don’t like? I guess you could just assert that I don’t really like Britney more than the Rolling Stones — but I’m in my head, not you, so why should I believe you?
Good Britney (“Unusual You”) and good Stones (“She’s Like A Rainbow”) are really pretty darn good. And then the rest of their oeuvre is sort of catchy but can get old.
There are better electro-pop (Robyn) and blues rock (Zeppelin) acts, but the genres, in and of themselves, are neither sincere or falsely sincere, even if they occupy different sides of the rock-disco divide (to bring race back into the discussion).
Ah, man…I forgot how much I love that Unusual You song. Whereas I find “She’s A Rainbow” just eh. (I think my favorite Stones may be Exile on Main Street at this point…predictably enough.)
And I think I probably like Britney better than Robyn, believe it or not. Though definitely not better than Kraftwerk, and not better than that one amazing Cut Copy album. But none of those are as good as Zeppelin, I don’t think….
Actually listening to Bollywood soundtracks now…wondering if I understand them more authentically than debased Indians since I don’t watch the films, and am therefore less superficial….
“She’s Like A Rainbow” does not have great lyrics. But it is a totally fantastic song. Yeah, my favorite Stones is psychedelic.
Timbaland likes Bollywood too, so that comes full circle.
Noah,
I meant your pop void is an ironic defense. I’m willing to grant that Britney is genuinely empty. When the debate is down to comparing her with the Rolling Stones, or debating her merits in general, I really can’t take it seriously enough to muster an argument. Maybe that works with some crusty classic rock fans, but it just doesn’t upset me. Sorry. Try dismissing the Clash — that usually gets them. (Oh how I hate the Clash …)
I figure the reason people say her music is for kids is because that’s who it was created for. Not much of a controversy there. I like music aimed at kids, too, just not the kind of stuff that treats them like little automata.
I don’t know that it’s an ironic defense. I think nothingness is a pretty important aesthetic concept…and my appreciation or Britney and the kind of nothingness she embodies isn’t ironic, as far as I can tell. Her music is meaningful and weird and beautiful to me in its emptiness.
And she’s got lots of adult fans…probably younger overall than the increasingly aging RS fans, but I’m sure I’m not the 40 year old who likes her music. It’s for adolescents mostly, not ten year olds, I’d guess, which is who the Rolling Stones were aiming at when they didn’t suck, for the most part.
And the Clash is annoying and overrated…but I still think their first album is pretty good.
I always in my mind toss “Exile on Main Street” and “London Calling” together. Both highly overrated by the critics and mythologized endlessly. Early Clash & early Stones are better. Although at least the Stones have always played great even to this day.