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

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?

It may have been mentioned already, but the article's glaring omission is the 90s/00s indie blues strain, from Jon Spencer/Trux through to White Stripes/Black Keys etc. Especially weird when he remarks so much on Jagger and Zeppelin's blues influence.

If some right-wing commentator wrote that "black music" (i.e. rap, RnB, etc) was "anti-intellectual" because of its abandonment of the best characteristics of "white music" (i.e. melody, general musical sophistication, etc) and would be all the better for acting "whiter" I can't imagine ILM doing anything different than dismissing it out of hand and seeing it's main idea to be pretty funny. Why do we take this idea so seriously and take it so axiomatic that music that's made largely for and by white people would be better should it incorporate "blacker" sounds?

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!

Here's an excerpt from my posting on this for those of you who don't feel like jumping off this thread to look:

"On the surface the argument appears to be a bold attack on a very early nineties music-crit trope: white people stole rock from black people (see Public Enemy's "Who Stole the Soul", Living Colour's "Elvis is Dead" etc., ) While carefully acknowledging the material and profile disparities between white and black artists Frere-Jones posits that this sort of musical mixing is a Good Thing (though terming it miscegenation is the sort of attention grabbing move that hints at the real purpose of the piece).

Whether or not you think cultural mixing is a Good Thing (I do), the argument that he puts forth goes further by suggesting that "indie rock" has undergone a racial purification that has systematically cleansed "black" music from the musical melting pot. Leave aside the lack of black musicians in indie rock, is this true? And how does one prove it? Brian Wilson, an acknowledged latter-day indie touchstone, is invoked as a touchstone of all things white, but how white can a guy be when his band steals their first hit from Chuck Berry? Arcade Fire is exhibit A in the articles first paragraph but can't the argument be made that "My Body is a Cage" is a descendant of blues dirges from the 20's and 30's.

No, says Frere-Jones, the beat isn't right. And here we come to the real nub of this piece: He doesn't like the way indie rockers drum. They don't swing, the bass players don't groove, etc. Which may be true (though not in the case of Spoon say, or Afghan Whigs) but so what? Is this a racial thing or just a mode of expression? Even one of Frere-Jones chosen whipping boys (to trade in another charged term) Pavement, fail to hold up under close examination. While pointlessly mocking the lyrics to "Grave Architecture" he fails to note the very swinging section of the song that occurs right before the final rave-up -- a section that could be described as jazzy.

Really what the article strives for is to make a splash and that it has done. Frere-Jones does a bit of extra-credit overreaching on his own blog, where he links the article to Lester Bangs incendiary piece on white supremacy and punk , which is a bit like appending an article on Grizzly Man to a piece on Winnie The Pooh."

If some right-wing commentator wrote that "black music" (i.e. rap, RnB, etc) was "anti-intellectual" because of its abandonment of the best characteristics of "white music" (i.e. melody, general musical sophistication, etc) and would be all the better for acting "whiter" I can't imagine ILM doing anything different than dismissing it out of hand and seeing it's main idea to be pretty funny.

or they might just start a lot of silly "Ask Geir" threads

x-post

rock artists dont take from new black music cos rock is dead and theyre too busy regurgitating old rock.

hollertronix-type artists are the guys doing what old white rock artists used to do.

"He doesn't like the way indie rockers drum. They don't swing, the bass players don't groove, etc."

basically sasha is annoyed that new white rock artists dont take from OLD black music, but then most new black music doesnt take much from old black music either.

" basically sasha is annoyed that new white rock artists dont take from OLD black music, but then most new black music doesnt take much from old black music either."

Interesting point...isn't Timbaland more Kraftwerk than James Brown? Or is it "black" because it's Timbaland?

these are not interesting points

I only speak for myself here...

Brian Wilson, an acknowledged latter-day indie touchstone, is invoked as a touchstone of all things white, but how white can a guy be when his band steals their first hit from Chuck Berry?

true BUT when people say "brian wilson" in recent indie context it almost always means "god only knows" and not "help me rhonda." (why people would rather sound like "god only knows" than "help me rhonda" is a mystery to me, fwiw.) i.e., it's wilson's diaphonous symphonic side that is most often referenced, not his 8-bar/12-bar side.

yes, only deej makes interesting points.

(argh, diaphanous. need ilx spellcheck.)

correct. lock thread xp

interesting point

when people say "brian wilson" in recent indie context it almost always means "god only knows" and not "help me rhonda." (why people would rather sound like "god only knows" than "help me rhonda" is a mystery to me, fwiw.)

Unless they are The Queers. (But yeah, I agree with the parentheses.)

"correct. lock thread xp"

mods, please delete all other replies in this thread barring this one.

Why did so many white rock bands retreat from the ecstatic singing and intense, voicelike guitar tones of the blues, the heavy African downbeat, and the elaborate showmanship that characterized black music of the mid-twentieth century? These are the volatile elements that launched rock and roll, in the nineteen-fifties, when Elvis Presley stole the world away from Pat Boone and moved popular music from the head to the hips.

What is he implying by saying that Elvis (Who is presumably supposed to represent Black Music© as discovered by White America©) was all about sex and Boone (representative of stale white America), by association of previous white music, was all about the head? (which is to say thoughtful pop music)

Sfj seems to be one of those authors that knows what would make for an interesting and controversial subject for a writing piece (in this case the implications of race on pop music) but without knowing how to actually deliver on the promise of the idea.

stealing black musical ideas vs. reveling in whiteness ... which is more white????

"without knowing how to actually deliver on the promise of the idea."

the basic idea of the piece is pretty much the same as the basis of simon reynolds' most recent book, that black and white musicians have stopped 'talking to each other'. i think sfj could have made clearer points, but its as though he stopped himself from making them, instead relying on safer ideas that sound like the stuff keith richards has been saying for decades, that modern rock doesnt have soul, blues, funk etc etc.

"which is more white????"

revelling in whiteness based on stealing black musical ideas.

The Beach Boys made fantastic soul music -- Wild Honey.

"Wild Honey" is by far the worst Beach Boys album ever. Even worse than the throwaway early Mike Love rock'n'roll stuff.