| redbird |
03-03-2013 11:20 PM |
I think some people in this thread are confusing colorblindness with political correctness. For whatever it's worth, and that may not be much, I can't think of many activists I've encountered who would say that the two are the same thing.
As for why this might be, rock and roll was birthed out of musical traditions of black Americans (although of course there were important influences from the Appalachian folk/country tradition) but popularized for the white mainstream by white artists. Perhaps when that happened that music could no longer speak of the specific experiences of a disenfranchised minority so they continually sought out newer forms of expression. It's hard to separate art from sociology IMO, if you really want to understand it, even though it might be more comfortable to ignore the latter.
There's something possibly to the fact too that if you never see another non-white person at a Fleetwood Mac concert you might not ever feel like it's your place to be. There was an interesting article I read recently at MTVhive.com called "The Only Black Guy at the Indie Rock Concert" that talks about what an analogue of that might feel like. The author is probably not literally the only one, but it's easy to see how he sure could feel like it.
Anyway, things get branded as "for" these people or "for" those people. Some of it is maybe grounded in truth (it was hip-hop music that spoke for the experiences of urban black America in the 80's and 90's, more than other genres, so why would people who live that reality find other genres that don't even acknowledge those realities more relatable?) and some of it is less so. But once that happens it can be a self-feeding cycle. I think the thing that hip-hop and rap was able to do especially the 1990's was come across not only as "for black people" but also "for young people", because it was young and new, it was the new kid on the block. So a lot of young people can identify with hip-hop through a generational identity regardless of race. Rock music OTOH hasn't been the new kid on the block since the 1950's, the only thing that's going to appear edgy to kids now is either very hard rock or very experimental/obscure rock.
I'm aware that I've spoken in gross generalizations and nothing should be taken to apply to every single person ever. Individual variations always happen. Uh, I'll just end with a shout out to Skeetwood Mac, The Melker Project's mashup tribute to Rumours that features a lot of current hip-hop artists like Rihanna, Ciara, Jay-Z, Ludacris, 2 Chainz, etc. If mashups are your thing then some of these are really successful.
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