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

^^^ehhh i dunno about this, lots of times the best tracks are the kind of happy accidents that only happen when folks take risks or whatever

-- deej, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 3:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

I'm not talking about musicians staying in their lane/focusing on the strengths at the expense of taking risks or experimentings. I'm saying that if someone's in a perfectly good rock band and hears an afrobeat or hip hop or bossa nova record they like, they shouldn't feel obligated to reflect that influence on their next album, unless they feel a natural artistic impulse to do so.

i.e. none of the bands mentioned in the article would benefit from being called out in SFJ's article and deciding to make their next album "funky"

guys:

is UI banned from discussion here? huge elephant in the room imo...

Here's my take on the SFJ article titled "Sasha Frere-Jones Asks: "Why Can't We All Just Get Along in 4/4 Time?"

http://planetofsoundandsight.blogspot.com/2007/10/music-sasha-frere-jones-asks-why-cant.html

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Of course they are, dj/rupture, as much as I love the guy (and have shelled out money for his stuff) really lives in the same art rock Wire magazine/Ui/DJ Spooky/east coast intellectual fortress that SFJ is sitting in. dj/rupture and Diplo are coming from two different standpoints and the mixing style is obviously a lot different, with Diplo's being a lot more pop-oriented and rupture's being a lot more noise/art oriented, but they both put out solo albums in 2004 that showed the earmarks of the dj mixes, but tended toward song-oriented work, and featured dancehall vocalists. They are two different things if you look at the dialog, but if you listen to the music there are fewer differences.

I own a Ui album, I don't think it's an elephant per se, but it's pretty indicative of the politics of crowds.

Ui's been brought up at least 3 or 4 times already, albeit mostly in passing. Don't think it's off-limits. (xp)

talking about dj rupture or diplo or whatever is such a sideline. DJs have been mixing genres for years

Diplo's effect has been, for the most part, exposing bmore club and caroica funk to the press. i dont think you can really give him any credit, unless you wanted to make an article about some sort of weird conglomerate 'indie culture' that sounds like most terrible subject for an article

seriously before i even heard of diplo we were throwing college parties where i would play rap music that i liked in between smiths songs that college dorks liked so that i could keep enough hipster girls on the dancefloor to hopefully get lucky, this wasn't like some brand new formula or something even tho it might have seemed like it to some of us at the time.

ps i am a college dork who likes the smiths but not really at parties

Well, we're already pretending indie rock exists in a vacuum, and the only thing outside that vacuum is african-american music (whatever the hell that is), and that the only way from part A to get to part B is by "miscegenation."

(post-college dork, d'oh)

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Ha, now we can go back to talking about Lester Bangs playing Otis Redding records at a party.

The issue with Diplo is that some folks think he's appropriating the culture of others and taking credit for it; while others think he's doing what Deej said--just spreading the word. Then there's the whole Cocorosie parties thing...

But there are people who choose to live in an indie-rock vacuum. That's their choice (I just wish some of 'em were not editors at general interest publications)

oh i think he's doing lots of different things, i just mean that his net impact on 'the world of music' amounts to basically turning the press on to a few regional sounds ... his parties, his mixes, everything else pretty much fades into the background.

yeah, even a lot of hip-hop is rhythmically boring these days. indie rock is so godawfully dreadful, though - what's it gonna take to get one of those vegansexuals to thrust their hips into the audiences' face?

and i do think he is getting lots of credit for shit he hasn't actually done, but he would probably argue that it isn't really something he has control over. which is partly true and i think the press takes a lot of blame for the way he has been presented

on the other hand, if he had been presented accurately he wd probably be more like a curator-type and thats not as glamorous or endorsement-enducing

yeah, even a lot of hip-hop is rhythmically boring these days.

-- burt_stanton, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 2:48 PM (12 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

what does this really mean?? 'rhythmically boring' i mean. i dont get what it is he wants from 'black music', its so damn nebulous

what's it gonna take to get one of those vegansexuals to thrust their hips into the audiences' face?

i don't ever want to see this, ever. i'm perfectly happy with bland indie rock if it means this doesn't ever happen. (ps i don't even listen to a whole lot of indie rock)

The more I think about it, the more I think that all the things he's looking for are happening, just not in "indie rock" which now means white people sounding like past indie icons of the 80s/90s and dudes trying to be Brian Wilson.

it's bruce springsteen now, do keep up

what's it gonna take to get one of those vegansexuals to thrust their hips into the audiences' face?

http://www.zulurecords.com/discorder/graphics/oct2003/linkpics/peaches.jpg

the exception that proves the glory of the rule

lolz

the article is awful and part of the problem with talking about it is that you gotta tease out the arguments he didn't succeed (or try really) at making. its all over the place w/so many generalizations and red herrings and straw people. and to me its prob a bigger a deal that indie has retreated from anything feminine since the 90s.

i mean, the thread i guess i see tying the classic bangs piece and whatever sfj thinks is going on now is that punk was in some ways about removing blackness from r and r and/or going back to a time when r and r's "blackness" had to do less w/technical proficiency, smoothness and/or streching out than cranking out things quick catchy and dirty ala chuck berry. but even if punk's players and indies are/were privlged white hipsters indie is more a class thing whereas even if there isn't any AFRICA innit the strains and influences to draw from are huge and in no way purposely eliminative. that hipsters no longer draw/borrow from black sources is a potentially big and interesting story given that thats what hipsters used to do BY DEFINITION.

(i didn't go back and reread that before posting so it might not make much sense)

what does "feminine" music sound like?

The Cramps? Stereolab? Boris? Belle and Sebastian? The Donnas?

it might also just be that good rhythm sections are hard to come by.

feminine music does have to sound like anything, but record collector rock is dudetastic

(doesn't)

er i didn't ever want to use the term "feminine music"

shakey i guess a part of what i mean is that indie is often w/o sensuality just as much as syncopation (though the two often go hand in hand)

sensuality is feminine?

who's more sensual Antony and the Johnsons or Peaches

yep

i've never heard antony and the johnsons and i try not to talk or thinnk about peaches.

if you dont know what i mean thats cool. i dont think ill bother fleshing it out on sfjs thread!

perhaps it calls for its own 400-post-long thread

i hope not

i do have to say the comment was partly inspired by me just finishing rob sheffield's love is a mixtape.

if only indie rock could be more like sfj blog posts. to wit:

"BIG TINGS GWAN

The magazine I work for is having a barbecue this weekend. I will be manning the grill at three events. Please come along and dance at the Catchdubs and Diplo dance party, listen to me talk about rappers and their rapping, or watch Fiona Apple talk and sing."

good god

big, big tings

poppin

little tings stoppin

indie rock is not an option

I know I’m very late to the discussion, but I just had a chance to read the article. It seems like a lot of bogus rationales designed to support th highly debatable notion that there’s less appropriation of “black music” in indie rock today than there was pre-1990 (“rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties”). I’m highly suspicious of at least two major points made in the article:

• First, the notion that there was much more appropriation of “black music” prior to 1990. Modern underground/indie rock developed at college radio stations (and on MTV) in the 80s, and many of the biggest indie acts from that era – The Smiths, R.E.M., U2, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Echo & The Bunnymen, Husker Du, The Replacements – don’t appear to me to be heavily influenced by “black music” (with some exceptions). Obviously, this is my first impression on the topic, but the bands listed above leapt to mind when I thought about indie music prior to 1990. I’m sure there are counterexamples, but setting forth some anecdotal counterexamples doesn’t undermine the basic point.

• Second, the reasons the author claims are the cause of this trend – that (a) white musicians fear competing with black vocalists, especially rappers (“the potential for embarrassment had become a major deterrent for white musicians tempted to emulate their black heroes. Who would take on Snoop, one of the most naturally gifted vocalists of the day?”), (b) white artists stayed away from “black music” to avoid being charged with “appropriation, minstrelsy, or co-optation,” and (c) “social progress,” e.g., the Internet, has “made individual genres less significant,” and thus whites stay with “white music” and blacks stay with “black music” – seem highly dubious to me. As to (a), there’s virtually no support offered for the notion that whites “feared” taking on rappers in the 90s any more than whites “feared” taking on compelling black funk, soul or blues singers from the 80s (one rap/rock collaboration – Walk This Way – from the mid-80s hardly proves otherwise). And I’d guess that white artists who wanted to appropriate Michael Jackson or Prince in the 80s had every bit as much to fear in terms of being embarrassed as a white artist who wanted to appropriate Snoop Dog in the 90s. As to (b), I just don’t buy it. It would take another post to go into all the reasons why I disagree with the author, but as one example: how does the author’s rationale square with this horrible genre, which “seeks to fuse the most aggressive elements of hardcore rap and heavy metal, and became an extremely popular variation of alternative metal during the late '90s”? As to (c), I don’t understand why the technology revolution the author describes causes such separations. It seems to me that it could create a melting pot of styles that artists are now exposed to, which might just as easily lead to genre-experiments and cross-pollination.

Sorry for the longwinded post. It’s an intriguing article, whether or not you agree with it.

I gonna go to a polka jam at the local Sons of Poland lodge and complain about how the band doesn't drone like (eastern) Indians.

i feel like looking for black influences in indie rock is just a category mistake. ie if thats what a white person wants to do w/their music they aren't indie rock.

(that gets back to the what about Maroon 5 etc comments way upthread)

if only indie rock could be more like sfj blog posts. to wit:

"BIG TINGS GWAN

The magazine I work for is having a barbecue this weekend. I will be manning the grill at three events. Please come along and dance at the Catchdubs and Diplo dance party, listen to me talk about rappers and their rapping, or watch Fiona Apple talk and sing."

-- artdamages, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 3:43 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

lemon-red?