Feb 042009
 

Yesterday’s celebration of The Day the Music Died took me through a range of emotions as I’m sure it did you. While we wind down from the festivities, I’d like to get back to a theme that I would like to work through with you over the course of the month, in between all our other fun and self-important rock discussion activities: Exploitive Black Rock History Month.

As I said in my introduction from a couple of days ago, I’d like us to do our best to explore and bemoan recurring, cynical, exploitive uses of what are typically considered black people’s musico-cultural achievements to add color (my apologies for the unavoidable pun) and credibility to the performances of primarily white rock artists. I’d like to kick off this discussion with an examination of possibly the most egregious and overused of these cultural abuses: the employment of the African American robed choir.

When did this practice begin? Can we blame it on Foreigner? Growing up, I don’t recall Elton John or David Bowie ever being backed by an African American robed choir, but sometime in the early ’90s it became commonplace.

Those of you who know me probably are aware that I am not a proponent of cursing… Continue reading »

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Feb 022009
 

Et tu, Boss?

The timing of The Boss wheeling out an 80-piece, robed African American choir during the performance of his new single, “Working on a Dream,” as part of his enthusiastic and otherwise inspiring Super Bowl Halftime Show performance was regrettable. For some time I’ve been thinking about using the month of February, Black History Month in the real world, to open a discussion on issues of race in rock ‘n roll. It was never my intention to pull The Boss into this discussion. As I think about the music world’s frequently missed opportunities that have resulted from both real-world barriers to musical integration and artificially divisive marketing genres, like Rock and Soul and Rhythm and Blues and so forth, not once did I consider Bruce Springsteen to have contributed to this problem. If fact, I’d say that as much as any white rocker over the last 35 years, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have sincerely done as much as anyone at keeping the footbridges across our racial divides intact. So don’t take what I’m about to say too personally, Bruce.
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