For those that like to read about music
I love talking about music and even sometimes reading about it, but in the amount of time that it took me to read these two articles I could have been writing a song or listening to some music. I feel less soulful for having even read this stuff.
Either way, here's an article from the New Yorker and then the Village Voice's response to it.
Why did rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, undergo a racial re-sorting in the nineties?
enjoy
A Paler Shade of White - How indie rock lost its soul.
Breihan vs. Harvilla: Does Indie-Rock Need Rhythm?
what do you think?
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Re: For those that like to read about music
The rock we know of the 60's was born of segregated communities. Whites and black, actually not white and black but by socioeconomic communities, they each had their own thing. The mountain music, city jazz, black Detroit stomping grounds, even Worcester's own ethnic groups had their own outlets for Italian, Greek, Irish, etc. music. Radio crossed the boundaries society or government set up and a new music was inspired. This was a new sound that combined the soul and character of each community. Today, that interracial/inter- socio influence continues as I hear Jamaican influences from Sting to the middle east influences on bands such as one of my local favorites, Johnny Dollar Experiment (their version of Gloria, for example). The gravity of the commercial industrial machine did much to compress the new sound into racial definitions to sell and satisfy its own greed. This is still echoed today in the music industry and the surrounding media (with articles such as the ones cited even). This resonated and spun off other interesting positions that increased racial tensions and also spiraled into the soulless homogenous music, that like most crap, floats to the top. First we should take white and black out of the definition and just call it "currently in America music", after all, its the listener that finds his/her own meaning out of it.
Nisa
Re: For those that like to read about music
Jesus H!
As soon as I am done with this comment I am sending Sasha Freer Jones an email that basically is going to state exactly what I am going to say here.
The dude is a rock critic for the friggin New Yorker. He's not me, writing shit on Volcano Boy wishing their were better shows in Worcester. He writes for the G-DAMNED NEW YORKER! He is a bonified taste maker! If he doesn't feel there is enough indie rock out there with an African American influence he needs to get off his ass and find bands that are doing black infuenced indie rock and needs to write about them in his internationally read and distributed magazine. I have never seen a bigger example of "if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem" before in my life.
He should start with this by the way:
Adrian Orange
Fellow tastemakers Pitchfork are just as much of a problem when they give an awesome album like Adrian Orange's brand new and amazing "Adrian Orange And Her Band" a 3.8 and make such tepid statements as "I imagine most folks would rather listen to actual Afrobeat or reggae records if they want to scratch that particular itch, but if you have an overwhelming need to hear a bunch of guys from Washington State attempt to approximate such grooves, you could definitely do worse."
People are out there right now doing what he is looking for, he just needs to go out there and do his damn job and publicize them before they realize that music is a hobby too expensive to continue with and they get a job at the local cubicle company.