OH NOES! Rockism indoctrination camp for pre-teens!

To be fair, said camp sounds hella cool.

here's where the problem starts.

oh noes...

Anyone know if she's related to Peter Schickele (a.k.a. P.D.Q. Bach)? Seems not unlikely...

that's because she's black, you understand.

Anyway, we got to form bands, I was in a band with some dudes from a suburban TC hardcore band called Subversive Energy. We did "Glamor Boys" by Living Color in front of our parents on the last day. It was a ton of fun, so good for these kids. Playing music is a good hobby to have and I'm all for anything that gets kids involved with it.

Rockism, shmockism. Telling kids that probably feel left out in school that they are secretly better than everybody else is what indie/punk is for! It gets lots of people through those years, and fuck if I'm going to tell them not to have something to focus on that's at least fun and positive.

But it seemed like a better headline than "cute rock camp for children of academics."

I'm not going to challenge, yet again, the ideological premise of this, specifically the "for you" part, because

1) I'm sick of repeating myself and
2) I'm sick of getting yelled at.

Of course, there are wide swaths of wretched music whose wretchedness goes unchallenged here, because no-one defends it (this is as opposed to indie/electronic/diy/rap/eclectica/esoterica/etc genre pissing matches that aren't really about music anyway). But try on this sentence: "Well, Paul Whiteman was the pinnacle of 20th century jazz--for you."

If she's telling these kids that "they are more special than other kids in the world, especially those who seek fame through the doors of those who want to be manufactured pop stars -- who are obviously doomed to eventual sadness, failure, exploitation, and drug use", and keeps reiterating that motif throughout the course, then that's a bit different. You don't want to make kids think they're better than the vast majority, because that might cripple them socially in the short, or not-so-short term...(and I stress "might".. I mean, I've had great and horrible teachers, and I don't think I'm "messed up 4 life" just because of the horrible teachers.)

-- M@tt He1geson (matt@game[remove]informer.com), August 22nd, 2005.

I dunno, in my experience, the fun and positive things are indeed real and likely, but can often lead to this subtle, lasting negriphobia/Geir complex that doesn't change until/unless the kids get sonned by older cooler indie/punk ppl who show them they actually AREN'T 'fighting the good fight' by writing off the 'music of the normals' wholesale. Pain is love.

????

That's a bit heavy for young kids.. and apparently heavy for college kids, and many adults until their deaths. Not shedding tears for the latter.. but younger kids are more comfortable with pigeonholes.. let's face it. It's the major protocol of social clustering until start of college (or later) -- as many bad side effects as it has. The world sucks.

I mean that stuff like this camp has this side-effect of polarizing kids into something that resembles negriphobia, even if it's not direct - 'stupid rap jocks', etc. It's a loaded word I know but I think it happens, a lot.

(Uh-oh.)

(And...no, sonning does not equal winning the argument.)

my favorite third-grader came home from school one day last spring and asked if I'd heard of Robert Johnson, "cause we learned in music class today that pop music wouldn't exist without him."

is that rockist indoctrination?

maybe, but it's definitely bullshit.

sorry if i overreacted m - I again stress I don't think it's that direct, but simply because'black music's reach and influence in what anti-pop kids consider pop is so huge, it kinda dominoes.

but black music clearly had no influence on rock.

I mean, we could start a movement to force moms to give births to babies in swimming pools booming both Bach, Britney, Boredoms, Bohannon, Bootsy, Bacharach, Boom Bip, and Biz Markie. Maybe we'll have a perfect music world. But, that's gonna be difficult.

Totally OTM, and though even in context it's hard to tell I'm pretty sure this where they're coming from. It's mostly about empowerment and feeling good. Yes, it's a slippery slope from empowerment to essentialism and/or privileging a discourse of authenticity, but I'm pretty sure that can wait until grad school. Meanwhile, 808s! Yum!

At least.

"Aryan, the privileged noodle"®

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