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

Hey, did he remember to call Merritt a racist this time?

Wait, what's this in reference to?

http://www.slate.com/id/2141421/

ILM Mega-thread on it somewhere.

I figured it was about the thread, which I've been looking for forever.

I didn't know anything about the J-Hop beef, though.

i love these old threads, they really bring me...hey, wait a minute! you people are just pretending to be old!

My favorite thing about this thread is that the New Yorker gets as close as it can to sensationalism and then doesn't have the good sense to have comments on their blogs. Message to print media: comments and such like make advertisers v. happy.

And holy wow I still can't get over the use of 'miscegenation.' As was said upthread, this is a really hateful word. Whatever happened to using 'cross-pollination' or 'hybridization' for stuff like this. And by stuff like this I mean nostalgic (read: reified) kerfluffle about something as insignificant as indie rock not being black enough?

It just feels like criticizing Metal because it's not mellow enough or rap that doesn't have three part harmonies, literary references and a glockenspiel solo. I don't really want some all encompassing musical behemoth that compiles a best of of all peoples favourite bits of music. Hang on, wasn't that done?

I don't really want some all encompassing musical behemoth that compiles a best of of all peoples favourite bits of music.

He doesn't either. After all, where is all the criticizm of current R&B lacking great melodies with a great building from verse to chorus, where is the critizism of R&B and hip-hop lacking sophisticated art rock values? His critizism goes just one way after all.

This thread is not miscegenated enough for my liking.
More miscegenate plz kthx.

i imagine his use of 'miscegenation' is based on lester bangs' use of it in his article

If that's a tradition he wants to keep going, he should have asked "when did hipsters become so white?" Which is loaded and bullshit too, but less obviously ridiculous than wondering when indie rock became white.

what could be more frightening than the vision of a "funky" arcade fire?

The Decemberists covering Maggot Brain in it's entirety?

The Shins covering "Let's Pretend We're Married"?

i'm waiting for his follow-up article "the indie-mulatto ideal: tv on the radio, black kids and har-mar superstar"

Where would the civil rights movement be without rock critics?

Where would the civil rights movement be without rock critics?

The "I've had a preview of the new album' speech.......

"I have a dream that someday little indie-rock girls and boys ..."

Jess Harvell's Idolator thing was pretty funny (Ned linked to it above), and Simon Reynolds nicely catalogues all the 2007 doom and gloom articles and postings-- (Deej linked to it) and offered his take on SFJ's piece. I don't think critic/blogger Carl Wilson's Slate piece is out yet.

I don't think critic/blogger Carl Wilson's Slate piece is out yet.

The societal aspect of music isn't particularly interesting unless the music has a message thats linked with society, or a 'function' like dance music. If the person making it is stultified by the societal considerations, then they're ignoring the fact that making music before distributing it is essentially an insular practice, and as soon as you tailor it to an outside force you're diluting whatever 'natural' conception of it you have. I can see where it's a problem that people feel this pressure either way, to stay 'white' or to incorporate 'black' influences more overtly as an homage, but talking about race, and I guess in this other article, class, is just halting people from making purely aesthetic decisions.

that assumes a vision of the artist as existing outside the "societal considerations" that have formed and influenced that person to be who he or she is

i mean which is just another way of saying that any time you write a song you're tailoring it to a whole variety of socially-determined forces (whether or not those are "outside" forces is not something i can speak to)

unless the music has a message thats linked with society

What kind of message isn't linked to society?

purely aesthetic decisions.

There's no such thing (I hope)

xpost - obv.

That Carl Wilson article is sharp as hell.

Are we supposed to long for the days when Zeppelin and the Stones fetishized fantasies of black manhood, in part as a cover for misogyny? If forced to choose between tolerating some boringly undersexed rock music and reviving the, er, "vigorous" sexual politics of cock rock, I'll take the boring rock, thanks—for now.

... where Wilson unintentionally elucidates exactly what’s wrong with today’s rock critics. Does he think his readers feel the same way? I sure as hell don’t.

That Carl Wilson article is sharp as hell.

"The diminished street-level faith in an integrationist future means there's not as much optimism about integrationist music. What's more, racial lines in the United States no longer divide primarily into black and white. When "miscegenation" does happen in music now, it's likely to be more multicultural than in Frere-Jones' formula, as in rainbow-coalition bands such as Antibalas and Ozomatli."

this is rather on point

I'm not sure about the Springsteen-Arcade Fire passage -- that line, white working-class culture once had a kind of significant berth in rock 'n' roll, too.

I mean, they still do, no? Matchbox 20, Nickleback, Hinder, etc.

hoos i am enjoying watching you come up with new ways to say "otm"

What's changed is that "white working-class culture" is no longer so white.

The brands of "authenticity" that both punk and hip-hop came to demand. . . tended to discourage the cross-pollination and "miscegenation" of musical forms.

Interesting.

white working-class culture once had a kind of significant berth in rock 'n' roll, too.

xpost to A, LS

Still does in UK indie - Arctic Monkeys, The View many more - not so much in US, no?

hoos i am enjoying watching you come up with new ways to say "otm"

-- max, Thursday, October 18, 2007 11:01 PM

first they came for my "^" key...

jeb OTM

What kind of message isn't linked to society?

i meant a purposeful message, aimed at change or criticism, rather than personal 'relationship' music thats focused more on individuals. while i think its fine to reference musicians in these debates i don't like the whole reforming thrust of all these essays

purely aesthetic decisions.

if the music doesn't have lyrics, then why does it have to have a dialogue that involves things other than influences, skill, and composition. suddenly race and class are pulled in, and sure i find it interesting when somebody without a lot of resources makes good music. i unfairly want to impose a bubble on people and assume they don't have to take those factors into consideration. i just think musicians should incorporate what they like and divorce themselves from prescriptive dialogue about race unless they're specifically motivated by that.

If forced to choose between tolerating some boringly undersexed rock music and reviving the, er, "vigorous" sexual politics of cock rock

on today's rock radio, you can have both at the same time!

wayyyyyy better article, btw

i'll say.

i just finished the slate article, it's definitely on point. i guess after being in so many lit and poli sci classes at uni that i've become insular and wanted my musical rhetoric to be more on a micro level, theory rather than culture, but i guess they have to be incorporated, oh well

Trashthumb - to even think about creating the space you talk about, the bubble where musicians 'don't have to take those factors into consideration' is political. And just because music doesn't have lyrics doesn't cleanse it of meaning

xpost to your previous post, sorry

While it's possible to cherry-pick exceptions ever since, Frere-Jones does so selectively, overlooking the likes of Royal Trux or the Afghan Whigs in the 1990s,

why do I suspect that if this line had come from the SFJ article he'd presently be getting raked both ways over the coals for citing Royal Trux as counterexample to the "does not swing" trend

poor sasha been down so long it looks like up to him

(excepting what would be a self-cite obv)

it's kind of amazing what you've been reduced to pointing out in this save-a-ho gambit, john

i can't remember EVER looking to indie rock for any kind of "blackness" or sounds of blackness. these days i don't look to indie rock for anything at all. once or twice a year a band sticks out and that's about it. i do pine for the days when new wave and new wave/dance acts and post-punk bands stole like hell and took anything that wasn't nailed down from any and every culture on earth. those were the days. and electroclash didn't do anything for me. and by new wave i mean everything from talking heads on up to whatever. but maybe my definition of indie rock is screwy. there isn't an indie band alive today who could conceive of or execute this gem:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QOoZAyJrB-8

it's amazing to me how many pasty new wave boys had disco, like, DEEP in their bones. it was like a part of them in such an organic way.

I think you mean "that" you've been reduced to anthony but don't let writing sentences get in your way man

again

seriously dude I know it makes you feel clever to bust out the "save-a-ho" trope but I'm just pointing out that Royal Trux are hardly bringing the funk now or ever and it's weird/annoying how partisan everybody (even/especially you) is that such an egregiously bizarre cite won't get a callout because it appears in a piece tilting against the windmill we've all agreed to charge

keep zingin' though man I'm sure it feels rad