A Paler Shade of White---Sasha Frere-Jones Podcast and New Yorker article Criticizing Indie Rock for Failing to Incorporate African-American Influences

was worried for a minute there!

don't be a hatter

Sally and Dom give me ample opportunities to translate rap lyrics, reggae songs, and/or street slang! Like I'm a mouthpiece for many, many cultures of dark-skinned people.

There is white people music and black people music simple as that...there will always be a seperator because both races can never agree on musical stylings...

More importantly, Indie music is not void of African influences. It in fact takes the roots of the african sound, and cuts out the middle man. You could say it has no African American influences, but once again Rock and Roll was formed upon African America music.

Not to mention some of the biggest Indie bands have african influences and even black members. See: Tv on The Radio, The Ruby Suns, Vampire Weekend, Islands, The Arcade Fire, (Does no one realize that Reggine is black? not in skin but in blood SHE HAITIN....theres a song called Haiti on the first fucking album..jesus) Iron and Wine,

the list goes on and on and more importantly Rap artists despised by most music magazines and media are readily accepted by pitchfork and indie media...

the whole idea is absurd as fuck.

The Ruby Suns? What?

The Ruby Suns rock.

SHE HAITIN

Rap artists despised by most music magazines and media are readily accepted by pitchfork and indie media...
Rap artists despised by most music magazines and media are readily accepted by pitchfork and indie media...
Rap artists despised by most music magazines and media are readily accepted by pitchfork and indie media...
Rap artists despised by most music magazines and media are readily accepted by pitchfork and indie media...

Britney can i get your sister jame spears Email why because SHE HAITIN

A SFJ book on this?! Whatever happened to that rap producers one he was working on?

From an Adam Rosen interview with SFJ in Gelf magazine

http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/the_new_yorker_gets_pop_cultured.php

GM: You took a lot of flak for your article, "A Paler Shade of White." What do you think was the most valid criticism leveled at you?

SFJ: It was too compressed, so the shorthand did damage. Black-and-white anything—music, in my case—is difficult to discuss because people instantly move from the part to the whole. An aspect of black music becomes all black music becomes black people. This is why there's that slightly awkward phrase on the first page (parodied by the Voice the following week) about sway and bass frequency. I was bending over backwards to try to restrain that point to purely formal attributes, but I am not sure the essay is consistent enough, or specific when it needed to be. I had the same problem with indie rock and mainstream rock. The lines between the groups being discussed weren't clear enough, and hip-hop ended up sounding like a proxy for all black music.
Also, the timeline is off — the shift I was focusing on was really a '90s process. It's a flawed piece; this is why it's becoming a book, as it needs expansion. The experience of being wrong (or sloppy) in public was really fruitful and got me thinking about the critical voice, in general, and how rarely popular critics go back and say, "Hey, I got this wrong." Why don't we? There is also an autobiographical story I need to sort out.

GM: Well…why don't you?

SFJ: That's what the book is going to be, in part.

reading through some of this thread...it's time for my opinions (oh boy)
(disclaimer: have not read year-old article tho most of it has been reprinted here blah blah etc.)

if sfj is wondering why white rock doesn't have any black influences, then he's unfortunately up a creek...rock music has always been such a mishmash of white and black sounds and concepts that to try to even separate and differentiate the two threads would take a man with a substantially higher IQ than sfj (whose IQ is prolley substantially higher than mine btw) to pull off...as a thousand plus posts right here would make evident.

if sfj is wondering why there aren't any great records nowadays like Y, Cut, Dragnet, Entertainment, Unknown Pleasures, etc.: well duh..I wonder the same thing often myself.

if sfj is wondering why indie rockers are turning up their noses at contemporary mainstream R&B, well, then...

bcz the most resonant excerpt from the article is Win Butler at a party wondering why sfj put on Lil Wayne...I mean, I imagine that rock&roll in the 50s was v. likely what mainstream pop is right now: loud, obnoxious, hysterical, unapologetic in its uniform desire to express/inhabit/embody teenage kicks, and most importantly almost universally derided by the world as pure unadulterated adolescent trash...I mean, we like Soulja Boy and T-Pain, but most people, esp. parent, to them it's crap...and Wim Butler falls into that category, and it kinda freaks sfj out.

Beatles Analogy: We can all read Shout! and cheer on Lennon for being a Teddy Boy, obssessed with Elvis, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, well into his tenure at artschool, while his classmates were into farty bigband jazz, and we watch with pleasure as all that jazz is washed away by the deluge, but fast-forward 50 years later and it turns out that sfj looks out into the crowd and sees a bunch of tripey-nerdy jazzheads where the indie-rock scene used to be and he wonders how he got on the wrong side of the fence i.e. how did we lose the script? why is indie so resolutely complacent-uncool-stupid? "why do i hang out with a bunch of dorks? am i a dork? i can't be a dork, i listen to james brown, and the clash and liquid liquid..."

and though i think a few people have brushed on this (disclaimer: i have not read the whole thread) it might be worth some discussion.

(tho i think implicating the 80s hardcore-post-hardcore scene is pretty much otm. i wonder what paul westerberg in 1985 would have said if he was a t a party and somebody put on some prince...suggesting that prhaps it was all illusion, maybe indie-rock was never cool...)

(tho maybe paul w. liked prince. idk. that's why i wonder...)

(of course, i imagine 90% of ilm, if they never hear the word cool again it will be too soon.)

one more thing:

I I remember the prominent general music critic Henry Pleasants made this very complaint about "loss of black influences" when he first heard the Velvet Underground. What a surprise that bands that follow in their footsteps should not break away from the trend!

― Cunga, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 5:20 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark Permalink

AAAAAAAAAARGH! Does anyone else here listen to White Light/White Heat and not hear a great dub record?

(of course, it's totally possible I might not be sure what dub is...)

Man, would I be like really out of line and gauche to ask SFJ to offer up some thoughts on what prompted his own band's pretty tepid and bloodless (but not altogether uninteresting) music? I mean this could be really helpful in terms of moving towards an answer to his own initial question. I mean, SFJ was there.
-- Mr. Diamond (diamond), Sunday, April 20, 2003

More importantly, Indie music is not void of African influences. It in fact takes the roots of the african sound, and cuts out the middle man. You could say it has no African American influences, but once again Rock and Roll was formed upon African America music.

All "rock" music is more or less influenced by black music, but you could say that indie has some white influences too while the white influence on contemporary R&B is very close to zero.

http://static.taume.com/image/justins-timberlake-futuresex-lovesounds.jpg

now stfu

worldofjustin.com

is this your site big hoos?

in any event someone plz photoshop a picture of geir's head onto that disco ball

aw that ain't nice

So in exactly which way has Justin Timberlake influenced current R&B. It seems more to me like it's the other way round.

Black influence in music can be waaay overrated. Plus, nobody is forced to use anything or to acknowledge any cultural factors that don't mean anything to them. Actually, if anything some kinds of black music should be denounced rather than used, but to each his own.

lol

Vison: Don't forget that ALL pop music is influenced by black music in some form or another. It surely belongs there in the mix. Actually to such an extent that all "rock" related music is "black" in a way. Which makes it meaningless to ask for blackness. I mean, as for the indie bands that are being accused of not being "black" enough: They do have a rhythm section. That in itself is a very obvious "black" element.

Geirbot.jpg

And to take the bait: since when were rhythym sections a designator of race?

I just used the "Suggest Ban" button.

that mr. diamond post is great

whoops! in regards to my wl/wh dub post, 'not hear'='hear'

Hi Geir, the influence does exist, but we don't have to buy it wholesale, it happened as a complex process, and it does not imply any obligations or debts. The way some people put it, it sounds as if black musicians are supposed to get 40 acres and a mule as reparation, and that of course puts the whole debate under a politicized, bitter perspective.

I dislike these "Elvis simply took black rhythms and styles blah blah blah" faulty generalizations. That's oversimplifying a complex and politically charged equation. I'm also puzzled that black influence is often equated simply with "rhythm", i.e, with some tribal pusating undercurrent to make people shake, rattle and roll. When Johnny Marr does that counterpoint thing in "This Charming Man", for instance, that's an african influence as well to a certain extent, but again, it's complex, because there's also a strong european contrapuntal tradition and so on.

Plus, I encourage people to express their dislikes a little more openly, and this is a subterranean discomfort that must be let out in the open: many people who like stuff like train,Garth Brooks or martial industrial bands loathe black music of any kind, particularly contemporary styles. So let's not rush anyone into being force-fed anything and respect all kinds of perceptions and worldviews.

BTW, I use black because 1)"african-american" it's a PC cop out which I reject and 2) to include other important traditions such as african-brazilian, afrocuban etc. So, 'till things are brighter, I'm the man uses the word "black".

lol

I didn't miss this place.

The way some people put it, it sounds as if black musicians are supposed to get 40 acres and a mule as reparation, and that of course puts the whole debate under a politicized, bitter perspective.

Dude...

Hi Geir, the influence does exist, but we don't have to buy it wholesale

I would say about 50 per cent of each. The Beatles got the mix between "black" and "white" elements just about right from around 1965 onwards.

(Otherwise, I'd much rather give them 40 acres and a mule - imperialism is a factor that shouldn't be ignored. But in music it may)

...

jesus

http://www.allglittergraphics.com/miss_you/glitter_graphics/miss_you_graphics_12.gif

This time I hit "Confirm".

hahaha

oh hey, ilm is back

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j244/egyptianlover661/itunes5.jpg

http://img11.nnm.ru/imagez/gallery/3/f/c/3/5/3fc353a0c2df7974bf61aeaa7a124670_full.jpg

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/rupert_christiansen/blog/2009/02/24/has_rock_music_got_a_cultural_diversity_problem

Nice comment from Jimmy Tarbuck there.

I think that's Peter Sissons

Oh hold on, he was at school with Jimmy Tarbuck too!

It may well be failed London Mayoral candidate Steven Norris.

most black music concerts almost always have a much larger spectrum of people from diff races than any rock show ive been to, even ones where the bands have black/non white members (bloc party, tvotr, cornershop etc etc).

from http://www.thedaily.com/about

For six years, Sasha Frere-Jones has been a staff writer and pop-music critic for The New Yorker, where he continues to write. He is expanding his 2007 essay "A Paler Shade of White" into a book for Farrar, Straus & Giroux. [...]

this is the first time i've heard that news