The Myth of Music and Race

This weekend I watched part of a documentary on Techno called Universal Techno, made in 1996.  That was the time when I was just staring to explore the music myself and I definitely watch this with different eyes now, than I would have then.  At that time, Techno as a global musical genre was hardly 10 years old. It's interesting to see what people's concerns were, and how perceptions changed or didn't change over time.

I was struck by this segment that explores the myth of race and music.  I like the juxtaposition of personal stories from opposing sides, and a third, more objective voice chiming in at the end.  The idea that music comes from a place that represents your influences really resonates with me.

I couldn't watch this and not think about the connections to current debates around the appropriation of music from the global south.  That inherent racial traits lead to the creation of an authentic piece of art is a myth that holds society's collective global understanding back.  I would love to see an update to this documentary to include emerging centers of electronic music innovation like Luanda, Rio, Monterrey or Johannesburg.  I am excited that more and more culture is being loosened from geographic restrictions, but at the same time I can't help but sometimes feel that there is a lack of introspection or at least channeling of personal influences amongst many of today's media creators.

Perhaps, because of our Internet facilitated increased inter-connectivity, less people are making personal art.  Deep engagement with one's own surroundings can seem so boring, so artists look outward with the ease of the click of a button.  The Techno producers in this documentary seem to be hyper aware of how their surroundings informed their music.  I think these days, the best of us continue that tradition.

As an interesting coincidence, there is an exhibit currently on at the Detroit Institute of Art called, "Through African Eyes" that explores African perspectives on their interactions with Europeans through art.  The New York Times article and slide show that covers the exhibit talks about how peoples' art, informed by their perspectives, is often misunderstood when taken out of context.  Perhaps it's the kind of thing someone from Detroit can relate to.

If you'd like to explore these ideas deeper, read this article brought to my attention by Professor Wayne Marshall called, "Of Mimicry and Membership."  And to entice/confuse you into going further, I'll leave you with this from Nigeria:

Feel free to discuss.

Comments

[Birdseed]

An important discussion, obviously. And messy, since no-one sensible actually holds any of the pure positions in it! :)

It's interesting that you start off talking about (at some level) first-world/"white" appropriations of third-world/"black" music, then eventually switch over to an article/set of videos that deal with the opposite. Would you consider them the same thing? I know I can be too much on the (feminist?) power trip, but I think there's a lot of difference based on what the effect of the appropriation is, purely in presence terms. The effects on the aesthetics is all well and good, but it's also a struggle for visibility and voice. In some ways.

On the other hand I still think there's a difference in aesthetic expression between the the two sides of that power dichotomy. Losing "influences" is easy enough if you're able to travel and access freely, if you're "neutrally unethnic" (ie. white) in the eyes of racist society, if you have the post-colonial position of interpretation. If you're economically independent! It's damn easy to divorce from any influence if you don't have to please a community to earn a living, or have considerable free time experimenting. And of course, not necessarily for the better...

[Me]

How come the RSS feed hasn't updated since Sundays post?

[rosko]

I had a (female black) professor in college who insisted once in a music history class that black/African/African-American musical culture was unique in that Africans sang in the fields to make themselves feel better, and that they sang the blues at home in their sharecropper's shacks to make themselves feel better. That just sounded like so much self-aggrandizing BS to me-- every culture has it's own folk music that serves the same purpose she was describing. I don't see how music from one culture is somehow more valid than from another culture; validity comes from honesty, as opposed to commercial music made to sell cd/LP units or hawk goods on TV. There are plenty of European folk musics that are as soulful as anything from Africa or Asia or South America (Scandinavian hardanger fiddle music, Bulgarian folk music, British folk songs, etc.) Is Fairport Convention authentic or not? I mean, they sing their native folk songs, but then they "taint" it with American rock instrumentation. . .

I was discussing with a friend how Gram Parsons records sounded so soulful, and a kid standing nearby laughed at us because he thought it ridiculous that any American country music could be considered "soulful", and only blues/RnB had a monopoly on "soulfulness."

[Sam Cooke]

What's up with the resentment, Rosko? It might be a dubious claim that "soulfulness" is an essence somehow monopolized by African diasporic traditions. But claiming "uniqueness", or tracing one's cultural products to traditions that are considerably less secular than many of the ones you've listed above (hence, "Soul" music), is not the same as asserting that it is more "valid" than others.

In this case, I hope you have an axe to grind with how European identity is privileged in the concept of "classicism" too?

[Nat]

Man, that lil wayne doppelganger video is blowing my mind over and over again.

[dave quam]

Great words Boima, your posts over here have been so on point. I think about this issue pretty much everyday, and I still haven't really come to any cohesive conclusions.

Also, anybody that thinks that country music cannot be considered soulful is A FUCKING IDIOT. A lot of guys writing soul records in the south were writing country songs too. Also, one of my favorite country singers is black (Charley Pride).

Race ain't nothin but a construct.