[nicfit]

Originally Posted by Glice

Mess. Will edit that so it's vaguely legible later.

Could you please edit all other people's posts too?
thanks.

Hi 'Neff.

[Genteel Death]

Glice made a good point about hip hop having little to no-relation to blues. I wish I still had the recording of an incredibly entertaining interview of Nina Simone where she goes off on a rant about hip hop being a worthless representation of African-Americans, which is brilliant and very insightful when all her ill-informed views are patronised and made fun of by.....an African-American interviewer.

I think this continuous hammering the point about the blues is only so widespread because it's mostly a media debate that stems, rightly, from American guilt in regard to its success at pop music and harrowing relationship with black people, rather than something which has that much resonance and influence outside of it, including, ironically, Africa itself.

This litany of the blues having an influence on all forms of popular music is untrue a lot of the time if we aknowledge that wildly different takes on pop exist outside of the Westen world, what with the filtering of local traditions and languages through top ten hits that become so massive and lucrative in so many other countries? What has a lot of Bollywood pop, for instance, got to do with the blues?

[Genteel Death]

Originally Posted by Nefeli

goodmorning death!

everyone has seen this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9Yz2_gSAFY

Hi baby.

[ni'k]

Indeed. And what does a lot of punk rock, indie, drone or noise have to do with blues.

But this is kind of just making the same tired points against already demolished arguments.

picture yourself later on in a century or two, when what we know of now as white english americans and white europeans are in the minority. would you really need the majority racial groups to feel oh so guilty and valorise the trad sounds of your most whitest music? would this do musical progress some sort of favour? lol. "those indie rockers man, they really were hip, all our soundz are sourced from those old sebadoh lp's man. that's the authentic shit right there." if we are going to be saying this later on in this century then we should just outlaw all music now and not bother.

in fact the right thinking race based musical history would probably draw a sliding scale from 19th century classical downwards in regards to us pale faces.

maybe the repressed realisation of this fact and the general cultural inertia and void of novelty in late capitalist media right now is what's causing swa to seek the comfort of an imagined racial historicity.

or maybe, it's the booze, period.

keef knows.

[Genteel Death]

 

[ni'k]

 

[Genteel Death]

 

[ni'k]

 

[ni'k]

 

[ni'k]

 

[ni'k]

 

[Glice]

Originally Posted by Genteel Death

Glice made a good point about hip hop having little to no-relation to blues. I wish I still had the recording of an incredibly entertaining interview of Nina Simone where she goes off on a rant about hip hop being a worthless representation of African-Americans, which is brilliant and very insightful when all her ill-informed views are patronised and made fun of by.....an African-American interviewer.

I think this continuous hammering the point about the blues is only so widespread because it's mostly a media debate that stems, rightly, from American guilt in regard to its success at pop music and harrowing relationship with black people, rather than something which has that much resonance and influence outside of it, including, ironically, Africa itself.

This litany of the blues having an influence on all forms of popular music is untrue a lot of the time if we aknowledge that wildly different takes on pop exist outside of the Westen world, what with the filtering of local traditions and languages through top ten hits that become so massive and lucrative in so many other countries? What has a lot of Bollywood pop, for instance, got to do with the blues?

Something I'm really interested in is how the mythology still carries traces of racism. 'Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil' - because, of course, it's not possible for a black man to be prodigiously talented. Django is generally considered in jazz circles to be prolifically gifted, not because of the suffering he underwent as a gypsy (an ethnic identity) but because he was fucking amazing.

And there's this other thing: there's lots of black music traditions that are resolutely intellectual and virtuosic. I was reading about the Diabaté dynasty recently, as a for instance. But no, 'black music' is still broadly represented in popular culture as either the music if 'slaves' (which is what a lot of the blues narrative boils down to, for me), the music of righteous anger in poor people (hip-hop - Chuck wasn't a great lyricist because he was poor. You wouldn't get half the things said about him that are said about, say, Leonard Cohen - a worse lyricist in my mind), the music of junkies (Miles, Coltrane - both astonishing musicologists in their own rights) or the music of sexual liberation and a-political hippiedom (reggae, broadly speaking - why is always Marley and not Tosh? Why is Perry a 'stoned madman'? Why is Pablo not considered in the same terms as Feldman? Why is Sizzla an 'everything's irie' rastaman rather than a frighteningly articulate political spokesperson (with racist and sexist undertones)?)

Oh, another thing - hip-hop, in the very early days, was a mix of white, hispanic, black and 'other' groups. It only, to my mind, became 'seriously' black around the time of NWA. Hip-hop is the product of a very American multi-culturalism, some of which includes a black narrative (PE again); why is that always rendered as 'black' music?

[ni'k]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtoanes_L_g

bell hooks touches on your point about hip hop.

i think it has a lot to do with the spending power of white middle class and working class males in america. males who are likely to have some contact with the black racial other, but also experience white privilege and status. in their adolescence, their fantasies of the "authenticity" of this black other whose life will seem to offer a form of "realness" (due to its obviously different characteristics and lower socio economic environment). this lifestyle would seem to offer a break and alternative to the stultifying white world of conservatism and the inertia of greater security. therefore, pretty quickly both blacks and music marketers work out that they can present a skewered commodity version of this lifestyle and make money off this. now its simply neater and easier to fence off hip hop as a "black" thing, thereby cutting out all the messiness of mexican/hispanic racial others that intrude on the fantasy. because if anything the recognition that this "specialness" was not down to some sort of aesthetic (and therefore imititatable) characteristics but in fact down to purely socio economic conditions would ruin the hip hop fantasies' notion of excessive capitalist greed and success.

[ann ashtray]

Musically, hip hop and blues indeed have little to nothing in common. However, in the mainstream world of each (let's not forget there was a time when blues was little more than black pop music, and got plenty of radio play) they are lyrically very similar. Yes, I put emphasis on that word "mainstream". Blues, as a form of pop music, was often about cars (Terraplane Blues, by Robert Johnson), women, and drugs (Malted Milk, another Johnson piece). I use Robert as an example because he was a man that wished to break into the popular world of blues, something that wouldn't happen during his lifetime (to be precise, it wouldn't happen until nearly 30 years after he deceased), and was writing songs around the same subject matter that was popular at that time. Basically, he was on some level mimicking what was already popular. Also, the audiences of each genre often responded to the music in similar ways. It could be very dancey. It wasn't always about the emotional stress of being a black American, as seems to be the stereotype in many cases. In other words, it's easy to make connections between the genres if one wishes to do so.



And what does blues have to do with punk, metal, indie, whatever? Good question, and in all actuality while this day in age the sub-genres of rock music often have little to do with blues, they still came from blues non-the-less. Of course, this isn't something that really matters, unless you are interested in the historical aspects of music (as I am, there are links in the way music has evolved, and these links often have very interesting stories to tell). Most of your earlier punk bands were definitely utilizing the blues scale...bands such as the Sex Pistols/ect which were direct descendants of the Dolls and Stooges, who both were largely influenced by the MC5, who was widely influenced my John Lee Hooker and Hendrix. Of course, I don't think any fan of punk rock should be expected to appreciate the blues, but history is history and again, it's something I'm interested in.

Whatever.

And for the record, I'm not in the slightest bit embarrassed by anything I said yesterday. I started a thread loosely expressing (+ yes, drunkenly expressing...it's fun) some opinions + was attacked for it. Naturally, I retaliated and when the whole thing got stupid (as it often does with you guys) I left...it had nothing to do with me admitting to being wrong about anything.

[Genteel Death]

Originally Posted by Glice

Something I'm really interested in is how the mythology still carries traces of racism. 'Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil' - because, of course, it's not possible for a black man to be prodigiously talented. Django is generally considered in jazz circles to be prolifically gifted, not because of the suffering he underwent as a gypsy (an ethnic identity) but because he was fucking amazing.

Another thing that really interests me is how white guilt relates to people who don't like hip hop at all, or certain styles of music that are popular in a big way with a predominantly black audience. You must have heard some white boy or girl trying their hand at having the higher moral ground because they listen to hip hop, therefore they truly understand the plague of ALL black folks.

[knox]

ok GD you're back from ignore.

i hope it feels good.

[ni'k]

 

[knox]

but you missed strategy two - the cartoon one.
when someone demands explanations because you're saying something really wrong (and they are giving you the benefit of the doubt) you just point and say:

look! there!

and then accuse anyone or anything you can think of.
you expect it to go that way, and the original point will be forgotten.

why try? because it works 32% of the time.

[ni'k]

 

jsut wnt 2 psot thsi on top of nu paeg.

gude giude 2 crap thet wil cum nxt

[ni'k]

shud hav cald thet:

rounde 2 - teh mornin aftar: denail nad backtracking