{"id":1981,"date":"2009-02-02T10:46:18","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T15:46:18","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-02-02T10:47:01","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T10:47:01","slug":"rock-town-hall-bemoans-exploitive-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rock-town-hall-bemoans-exploitive-black\/","title":{"rendered":"Rock Town Hall Bemoans Exploitive Black Rock History Month"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Et tu, Boss?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The timing of The Boss<\/strong> 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<\/em> and Soul<\/em> and Rhythm and Blues<\/em> 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.
\n<\/p>\n

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The Boss’ sincerity has never been in question.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

As we bemoan what I’m dubbing Exploitive Black Rock History Month<\/strong>, though, the device of an established rock artist dialing up an African American robed choir will come under scrutiny as will Amy Winehouse<\/strong>‘s “retro-Negro” trio of slap-happy backing dancers and rock bands’ employment of a low-wage, Last Surviving Bluesman<\/strong> to bolster credibility and dazzle white middle-class audiences. Some of what I’ll have to say — and what you may choose to share — will be painful. Some of our assumptions and opinions, especially since membership in the Halls of Rock has been pretty white and male, as far as I can tell, may be downright wrong. I’m hoping we can pull in some Townsfolk who may have a different personal perspective on these issues. I’m accepting of the fact that I may not always know what I’m talking about, as I hope you will accept your own limitations, but I’m no longer sitting quietly and bitching to only my close friends and family about the use of humans as window dressing for a rock artist. The same goes for a black artist’s token use of well-known white rock guitarist (eg, Michael Jackson<\/strong>) or Gwen Stefani<\/strong>‘s abhorrent use of those Japanese kwepie dolls.<\/p>\n

Popular music of the last 50 years is loaded with enriching blends of cultural and ethnic musical traditions: Stax\/Volt, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Talking Heads, even the lightweight Fine Young Cannibals… Plenty of white rock artists have incorporated large chunks of black musical traditions in their sound without direct collaboration with a black musician, and that can be cool too. I’m not suggesting some purist equation regarding this stuff nor do I intend to be overly judgemental. Rather, I’d like us to focus on what may be some of the most egregious practices of exploitive cultural devices in rock and see if we can’t do our part to put an end to them.<\/p>\n

Later this week I’ll roll out my first examination of what may or may not<\/em> be an exploitive practice employed by rock musicians over the years. I’ll be asking for your help in sorting this out. A few other pieces are expected to follow. I look forward to a healthy, if sometimes awkward, series of discussions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[147],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}