neloner: How do you feel about the stigma that black people are only supposed to listen to Rap/R&B or “black” music? I pretty much listen to indie pop/rock only and I constantly get called “white” for it. How do we get rid of this?
Wow. This is a great question. I’ve dealt with this almost all my life. I grew up in a household where all types of music was played from rock to gospel to R&B to country. We had Smokey Robinson, Hank Jr., Whitesnake and Mahalia Jackson all being played on the same day. When I was a kid, I didn’t know anything about what type of music I was supposed to listen to. I just listened to what I liked. None of this “white music”/”black music” shit clicked until I moved to Georgia when I was 12. When I started talking to kids about shit like Whitesnake, Guns N Roses or Pink Floyd, they looked at me like I was playing a joke on them. Black kids thought I was a weirdo and white kids thought I was crazy. I really had no one to take me in except the nerds, the freaks, the few goth kids and the metalheads. Through these guys I learned about shit like Metallica, Cannibal Corpse and Carcass.
But this is also when I found punk rock. The whole outcast idea of punk rock spoke to me. But when I started rocking my Operation Ivy and Dag Nasty shirts to school, shit just got way worse. I was “that oreo” or the “black cracker” because I was listening to what they all considered to be “white music.” I dealt with that shit up until I graduated college in 1996. It’s sickening to know that these types of sentiments are still active in 2012.
Now, of course I’m not naïve enough to ignore the fact that some genres of music tend to attract more people of a certain race, but I think that has more to do with upbringing and social pressures rather than the actual music itself. Look at country music, for example. I love Merle Haggard. Always have. Always will.
One of my all-time favorite albums is “Going Where The Lonely Go.” Now, if you were a little more musically ignorant, you could easily mistake that album for one being sung by a black man. I’ve said a million times that R&B/soul and country music are easily close cousins. Listen to some of Otis Redding’s more delicate songs up against Willie Nelson’s “Red Headed Strange”r and if you can’t hear similarities, your ears weren’t made to listen to music.
A lot of black people won’t go to a Black Sabbath concert, but will rock a Jimi Hendrix shirt all day. Shit like that makes no sense to me. And when I hear these idiotic race classification comments coming from admitted Jimi Hendrix or Lenny Kravitz fans, it makes me wanna slap the shit out of them. They’re basically admitting that their criticism of music is solely based on race and nothing else. Let a white person say that a black Slayer fan is listening to “white music” and black folks would be enraged. But it’s perfectly acceptable for black people to say the same thing.
It’s weird that we make it perfectly acceptable for white people to be a part of hip hop culture, but it’s still an issue for black people to be a part of anything outside of hip hop and R&B. You asked how we get rid of this. I think the only way is for black folks to stop caring about what other people think about your music taste (blacks or whites). Listen to what the fuck you wanna listen to and fuck the people who have a problem with it.
The more black kids who take heed to this, the quicker it’ll get accepted. If there’s a large multitude of people involving themselves in something that was previously taboo, eventually, the masses will have no choice but to accept it. Look at skateboarding for example. When I was 14 and skating, it was not popular for black kids to be on a skateboard. You needed to be on the blacktop with a basketball in your hand. But look at skateboarding now. Black kids are a welcomed addition to the sport because the numbers of those involved increased.
So, my only advice to you is…do you. Fuck them.
Thanks guys for the great article and comment! Even I, being caucasian, had a period as a juvenile where I did not respect white rappers, since I felt, they had to be black to be real. How stupid is that? It took a while until I accepted folks like Eminem, Evidence, 3rd Bass and even Beastie Boys. I think back then I wanted to be different and used rap music for my personality differentiation and it had thus to be even different from my race. Me and my homies even called ourselves “white n—as”, inspired by the house of pain white trash movement. But maybe today’s music is less important for people finding themselves and their identity and we have the chance to be more open minded and objective.
Great read!
I think the whole black music/white music thing is specific to America. Things like listening black music & white music goes back to the whole big race issue having to fit into a box which is common in most parts of America. My issue is come to Western Europe… if you’re into different music/different sports etc. it is deemed more acceptable than it is America. You can go to an underground techno/house music rave in London and half or more of the crowd might be black, or you can go to UK hip hop/grime gig and half the crowd might be white. It’s just America has a different culture where people are like sheep they don’t do something until someone else does it first (or more specifically someone in the mainstream). Like you said Myke, skateboarding wasn’t popular within the black community until recently but in the skating community you still high had high profile skaters such as Harold hunter, Kareem Campbell & Ray Barbee bucking the trend. The way lil Wayne has jumped onto the skating scene like he has its been seen like he’s a pioneer for black people/hip hop fans to get into skateboarding but hip hop has long been linked to skateboarding just not on a mainstream level. My point is people are worried about appearance and fitting in so it may seem like it is acceptable in the mainstream community for black people to only listen to hip hop & R n B but there are plenty black people who are in bands, high profile black DJ’s at clubs playing EDM (Kerri Chandler,Moodyman,Theo Parrish to name a few), and there are plenty of black people who listen to all different kinds of music it’s just not accepted in a mainstream society as much as it is a white person listening to hip hop & R n B so they don’t shine any light on anyone bucking the trend.