Tune-Yards member goes to "Kill White Fragility" workshop, throws dance parties

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/arts/music/tune-yards-merrill-garbus-creep-private-life.html

this def needed a whole new thread, thx whiney

you're mad because you see this as performative wokeness, i guess? what's more maddening, seeing a popular musician learn some shit about white privilege and wanting to share what she learned, or starting a thread about it where you rename a six-month workshop on race at the East Bay Meditation Center the "kill white fragility" workshop?

new album's not bad btw

You participated in a six-month workshop on race at the East Bay Meditation Center while you were working on this album. What was the most surprising thing you learned there?

The whole thing was surprising. We met twice a month, looking at Buddhist principles and our roles as white folks in the community, with readings and videos. A lot of it — learning about a concept like white fragility, for instance — was like, “Oh my God. There’s a word for this?” Instead of walking through the world with this huge amount of defensiveness, [thinking], “I will not be racist,” to say, “Merrill, you are racist, simply by being brought up white in this society. So how does that feel? And let’s move from there.”

what a terrible thing for her to share. ban tune-yards

sorry, ban tUnE-YaRdS

thread title is a play on this ILX classic

CocoRosie member goes to "Kill Whitey" Ironic dance parties and gets called out by brainwashed.com as racist

oh, i didn't make the connection. i know a lot of people whose eyes would roll out of their sockets at the idea of "white fragility" and i'm forced to interact with them on occasion, so i assumed that's what you were doing too, sorry

only '00s kids will remember this

Maybe her next album will be called 'Performatively Woke' and have lyrics confronting the complexities of not only being a white woman playing African-influenced music but singing about singing about her own white fragility and cultural appropriation.

i can't listen to her voice. i tried to listen to the video in the nyt story and i couldn't do it. i really like her sister's work though. her album on autumn/feeding tube is so cool. also reminded that she has a song with the line "hello everybody, there's a nazi living in my head..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpQ-r1hmMH8

In a time when artists from Kendrick Lamar to Solange are making vital music about why black lives matter, what does a white musician have to add to the conversation about race?

That’s the question, isn’t it? I constantly question, “Do I deserve to be here?” Why am I talking to you, for instance? This is a privileged place to be. I wish I could say, “I’ve sat and meditated for so many hours on my whiteness that I have something to say.” But I have no idea! And I think it’s O.K. not to know that.

this kind of seems like useless hand-wringing that does nothing to actually help anyone or make the world a better place?

to be fair it is followed by this

That being said, there is plenty that white people can do. A lot of the answers that I got doing that workshop were answers I didn’t particularly want to hear. Like: “Talk to other white people.” My first response was, “No! Why would I want to talk to Trump supporters, or my family that I don’t agree with?” But I will. I don’t want to alienate my fans who voted for Trump, because I want to talk to them. I want to talk about it all.

but what exactly is she going to say when she talks to the Trump supporters if all if the only conclusion she can come to is this fatalistic shrug?

Classic thread title !

Her opener on her upcoming tour is Xenia Rubinos, who is a) fucking incredible live, I'd be more excited to see her than Tuneyards and I really like Tuneyards, and b) is Latina and political as hell. So Garbus is doing more than going to workshops and scratching her chin, she is actively promoting non-white musicians to her indie fanbase.

xenia rubinos is really good yes

yes.

I think her Trump voter fans probably didn’t come on board until after the Pazz and Jop win. They only like winners.

I can't imagine that she has a single Trump-supporting fan

xp

feel like it is easy to clown her but from reading that article she seems to genuinely be looking at systemic inequality rather than posing as #Resistance. that East Bay Meditation Quote from KM is pretty rad. her answer to the best movie she was was really cool.

imo the headline and image they chose to go along with the article does more to set it up for clowning.

clowning this may seem easy but i'd really rather clown her dull music

actually one of her recent songs sounded ok, but she really has put out some bad stuff down the years

the one xenia rubinos song I heard sounded exactly like 311 with jazz vocals lol

so a new favorite?

very much so

you can certainly see why tuneyards is a fan when you watch this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GCRO4FnVNQ

he one xenia rubinos song I heard sounded exactly like 311 with jazz vocals lol

― kurt schwitterz, Thursday, 18 January 2018 18:08 (eleven minutes ago) Permalink

This is one of the lulziest band descriptions I have ever heard

hell yah she got that chad sexton snare ping on every song

the piccolo snare must be stopped

we should have a piccolo snare thread

these dudes have got the best snare sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9yoebrgzYA

agree so much w the picollo snare hate. i dont want to hear a tennis ball, give me something crunchy. i want to hear those little strings of metal brushing on the drum head with every hit.

That's not a piccolo snare, nor is it especially ping-y? I like it when snares are really crushed w/compression and you can hear the ring. Not as in fashion as the tuned-down, muffled, no-rim-shot '70s sound these days though.

Questlove is your guy for piccolo snares, but he keeps it super dead and muffled so it sounds like a '90s rap sample.

damn dude we were just playin sheesh but this is 100% a piccolo snare

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3btG0g5_Zg

also that song has the color amber kind of energy all over it

http://youtubedoubler.com/mHYv

Ugggh I do not like that drum sound, you're right though it's totes 311.

man I don't joke about snare sounds

Chad Sexton & P-Nut somehow ended up being more influential than Weezer or Nirvana?

look they're a tite rhythm section ok

thread title is a play on this ILX classic

would have been much better as a revive/reboot

311 comparison is tough but fair

I know it's the album title but man is that one misleading url

That first Xenia Rubinos song was great - it reminded me of Battles. The second one, with the fake jazz vocals, sucked, though. So which one is more representative of her work?

last album mostly v good - try 'black stars' or 'right?'

You're going to want to read @annkpowers' conversation with @tuneyards. https://t.co/pt89RFOQke pic.twitter.com/7HhMbFZOfR

— Lars Gotrich (@totalvibration) January 19, 2018

says the white artist who frequently appears in vaguely "tribal" facepaint

I mean, she's not wrong. But there's room for a nuanced discussion there. If you're sampling OR performing the music of a (sub)culture that you're not a member of, I think it's incumbent on you to bring visibility to that culture and and engage directly with it whenever possible (pay your dudes, essentially). And the more successful you are, the more important that responsibility is.

So... this thread has forever ruined Xenia Rubinos to me. Thanks.

IDG what the difference is between sampling vs covering vs imitating the style of. Why is sampling, in particular, colonialism more than those other things? Isn't it actually far less so, given its history?

"I am doing this thing that I feel guilty about so I'm going to criticize others for doing it while absolving myself by 'admitting' I'm doing it. I really own my privilege."

Imo because it's easier to do thoughtlessly. And when you're covering/performing you sort of can't help but do it your own way, as opposed to literally taking the sound of something else. See also white producers who heavy sample black voices, can be a weird vibe.

xp

But yeah, I don't know what her new music is like aside from these lyrical themes, but it sounds like she feels extremely guilty about her past cultural transgressions at least.

Stay on topic!

http://pearldrum.com/artists/drumset-artists/chad-sexton#configuration

14x5.5 Masters MCX snare drum
14x5.5 Reference Pure snare drum
14x5.5 Sensitone Steel snare drum

Count me in as voting for more or less standard snare drum, just super-cranked. Stewart Copeland used to crank his (not piccolo) snare so tight it had almost zero depth to it, so they had to add some decay or whatever back in with studio magic.

I've probably said this in some other thread, but I kind of love Down. I think if I were in a big enough band to have coming-out theme music, I'd come out to the instrumental break right after the chorus.

I mean, she's not wrong.

She is wrong. Taken to its logical conclusion, her statement implies that Duke Ellington, Chuck Berry and Public Enemy had no business recording the music that we so admire them for, because the piano, the electric guitar and the sampler were all invented by white people. (Unless, of course, we agree that it's only whites who shouldn't be allowed to recontextualize the achievements of other races.)

uh oh

I mean, sure, she's completely insufferable, but...uh oh

https://media.giphy.com/media/RHiD0K65NxxLO/giphy.gif

yeah, I mean like, chicks be playing guitars singing about feminism, but who made that guitar, know what I'm sayin?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFNGTQf6HQ8

One of my favourite snare sounds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tdu4uKSZ3M

I went on a Bill Bruford kick recently after reading his book, and was struck by how consistent his snare sound was throughout all the different bands, production eras, etc. It's really just in his hands.

She is wrong. Taken to its logical conclusion, her statement implies that Duke Ellington, Chuck Berry and Public Enemy had no business recording the music that we so admire them for

Whoa, Garbus caught in a logical ...... snare

C'mon guys, I don't think I expressed myself that badly? The point I want to make is that this whole "But that's ours! Yeah, well, that's ours!" mindset is unhelpful and a false dichotomy. The music, the tools, they belong to everybody. Sampling is recontextualisation, not colonialism.

good luck getting anyone to jump off the 'white ppl shouldn't do whatever innocuous thing' bandwagon

Oh good, you're back

npr would know a thing or two about apologizing for colonialism while pretending to be woke about it

xp haai!

basically she is saying you got to come original

all entertainers, come original

IDG what the difference is between sampling vs covering vs imitating the style of. Why is sampling, in particular, colonialism more than those other things? Isn't it actually far less so, given its history?

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Friday, January 19, 2018 11:34 AM (fifty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sampling you could argue is at least more transparent compared to slavishly aping a historical style, as opposed to all those worthless ass st. paul and the broken bones, mayor hawthorne whiteboy neo soul dipshits, AND (in most cases) the artist being sampled gets a cut of the publishing

last night on the local bay area npr station i heard a commercial with this lady with the oldest white person voice say "we all have the blues after this election so let's celebrate the blues!" and it was the funniest thing i've ever heard. also hey check out this snare:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UyYYDbtrQM

i just googled "pingiest snare" and the first hit is my twitter lol

Bruford has a great snare sound. Other consistent-over-career dudes (all things considered) are Alex Van Halen and Pete Thomas from the Attractions (who described his trademark generic Ludwig as a "biscuit tin").

welp we were all wrong. here's da god blowing our collective minds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DRRiWN9qkw

xenia is dope as fuck, i'm a longtime merrill fan but last album was very hit and miss.
just starting new one.

xpost He must go through so many sticks if he's constantly hitting the rims (as appears?). Like his attitude, though.

"I am doing this thing that I feel guilty about so I'm going to criticize others for doing it while absolving myself by 'admitting' I'm doing it. I really own my privilege."

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Friday, January 19, 2018 12:40 PM (one hour ago) 

Well, see, man alive: you've got to trust your instinct, and let go of regret....

dude from 311 is a p good drummer imo

oh yeah, he's ill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoDsJAiseGg

Rimshots are the way to go imo but I think his thing is striking it a little closer to the tip of the stick? That gives it a higher pitch and more ring.

grassroots would be the best album of all time if there wasn't any vocals on it

311 is basically unlistenable but I'd still rather talk about them then argue with trolls, good job everybody

311 slays bud

ok im listening to grassroots and the vocals sound good damn this is a good album. throw me a join on stage whats up!?

*joint

Drummer is the only thing that makes them listenable for sure. He *gets* the thing that a lot of white "funk" drummers seem to miss, which is that syncopation is only funky when you can really feel steady the pulse underlying it.

kinda pleased that whiney's cranky tuneyards thread is now the 311 thread

I always thought the harmony guitars at the beginning of "Beautiful Disaster" sounded like "What if Iron Maiden became a reggae band?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjfT2joaJxs

yessss day feels like a good day to burn a bridge or twooooo

Drummer is the only thing that makes them listenable for sure. He *gets* the thing that a lot of white "funk" drummers seem to miss, which is that syncopation is only funky when you can really feel steady the pulse underlying it.

I hate his feel, too ricky-ticky swing-y. And too much open hi-hat. Not funky. Sad!

Drummer is the only thing that makes them listenable for sure. He *gets* the thing that a lot of white "funk" drummers seem to miss, which is that syncopation is only funky when you can really feel steady the pulse underlying it.

otm

i got high as a kite in college listening to 311 (and CIV for some reason.)

I saw 311 perform at the GameWorks in Las Vegas
it was Sega's release party for Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast
Jimmy Kimmel was there with his little kid and wearing cargo shorts I said hello and he said hey

this is literally the only thing i think of when people talk about 311
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-TRR5zBLrI

as well as

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQdR3AIhg-c

what about t-11

it's weird to me that someone would say that quote above about sampling, and then continue to make tune yards music

the year that i was mega into sublime, the friend who had got me into them kept trying to get me into 311 and Slightly Stoopid. proud that i resisted :)

Brendan Canty (trivia: I saw in the 311 bio that their first gig was opening for Fugazi in 1990!) has a pretty awesome ringy snare sound, too. Like here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVCMLWtVN5E

yah no one ever talks about how funky/reggae fugazi tried to be. bauhaus too.

Bauhaus got totally dubby, but Fugazi definitely went all punky reggae at times. Usually only fleetingly, though.

Thanks to the turn this thread took, THIS thread is all I can think of now: Scott Stapp/311 FITE!

Drummer is the only thing that makes them listenable for sure. He *gets* the thing that a lot of white "funk" drummers seem to miss, which is that syncopation is only funky when you can really feel steady the pulse underlying it.

I hate his feel, too ricky-ticky swing-y. And too much open hi-hat. Not funky. Sad!

― change display name (Jordan), Friday, January 19, 2018 3:39 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

IDK, he's no clyde stubblefield, but I think he's a cut above most of the dudes in that genre

I mean 'syncopated but not funky' is a defining characteristic of the '90s

xp

Brendan Canty otoh is very heavy-handed and rock-oriented in his "funky" playing, but I feel like he takes it enough in that direction that it works bc it loses that "I'm playing FUNK" stench.

yah no one ever talks about how funky/reggae fugazi tried to be. bauhaus too.

― kurt schwitterz, Friday, January 19, 2018 3:47 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I heard "Bela Lugosi's Dead" on the radio the other day, and I couldn't place it for a minute, so I just thought "this sounds like End Hits-era Fugazi".

Serious Q

Why does the NY Times interview with Merrill Garbus contain a part where she says “I wish I could say ‘Well, guys, I meditated for hours on my whiteness, and Ifigured it out,”

And then the caption on the photo in same article says, without caveat, “Merrill Garbus mediated for hours on her whiteness.”

Just that level of misreading is enough to make me entirely mistrust this article about this musician

The avenue of thought that Merrill is speaking on in this article only becomes problematic when it is, as this article has done, the sole focus of the article/interview

In other words I call hatchet piece and I’d shout at the write of this article if they were here on this message board

Iirc fugazi were pretty funky on end hits

*writer

Also I don’t think Merrill’s music is for me but I appreciate her craft and her approach

And I do stan for her first album

But yeah fuck this article, worse than any bad song Merrill ever recorded, frankly

I messaged the guy

Anyway

Serious Q

Why does the NY Times interview with Merrill Garbus contain a part where she says “I wish I could say ‘Well, guys, I meditated for hours on my whiteness, and Ifigured it out,”

And then the caption on the photo in same article says, without caveat, “Merrill Garbus mediated for hours on her whiteness.”

Just that level of misreading is enough to make me entirely mistrust this article about this musician

― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, January 20, 2018 12:10 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is it a misreading? my interpretation was that Garbus is saying that she's mediated for hours on her whiteness and *not* figured it/anything out

I mean 'syncopated but not funky' is a defining characteristic of the '90s

xp

― change display name (Jordan), Friday, January 19, 2018 1:54 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is so true.

@ soref

She attended a workshop “that applied Buddhist principles” and then sardonically said that she wished she could say “I meditated on my whiteness”

I don’t know

Centring the cluelessness of some of these comments— which, specifically, I think only come off as clueless because white artists shouldn’t centre wokeness to sell records, the point of educating oneself on this shit is to self-censor, not to capitalize upon— centring the cluelessness, as this article does, only makes the centring of “wokeness” worse. I’m honestly wondering if this “discussion abt whiteness” was just a moment in a longer interview. Or who knows. Maybe the entire album is like this. But the article reads very damning

I am told that the album is as “this” as the interview is “this”

A million sighs

She’s doing an indie pop Macklemore thing which is as good & bad as that was prob

this is a really good album, I like it more than anything since the first one (and maybe whokill)

my sense of merrill is that she's coming from a good place but it's super easy (and profitably clickbait-y) to willfully misread her because she makes a easy punching bag.

sure it's well-intentioned but making a whole album about her white guilt still comes across as self-indulgent, somewhat clueless, and ultimately dull

T/S performative wokeness vs. performative ignorance

Lars's shitty snare sound on "St. Anger," do you think that was him going for some sort of funk-metal clang?

"sure it's well-intentioned but making a whole album about her white guilt still comes across as self-indulgent, somewhat clueless, and ultimately dull"

that would be true if it were a spoken word album but there's also music on here which is all very good and you can like, ignore what she's saying if you find that boring.

I don’t think it’s well intentioned. I think I’m just too stupid to get it, but I fail to see how this kind of endless handwringing and maybe-not-really performative self-effacement would help even one person of color. I also don’t understand how her older music, which drew from non-white influences without apologetically acknowledging it, hurt even one person of color or took anything away from artists of color. To call using certain time signatures “colonialism” is so over the top.

Honestly I think she sounds condescending.

https://www.gq.com/story/tune-yards-made-a-pop-album-about-white-guilt-and-its-fun-as-hell

in this interview she mentions she almost called her debut album White Guilt lol. she discusses how these themes have been present through all her work, but they weren't as direct or obnoxious as on this album, and if she's still handwringing about this stuff after nearly a decade ...

this album is definitely musically worse than the last two too, it's much more groove-based but the grooves aren't particularly memorable

I haven't heard a fuckin note of this but I'm thinking about how Talking Heads ca. Remain in Light/Stop Making Sense managed to offset/own/maybe comment on their pilfering of African music by Byrne dancing in these weird, floppy ways and singing about the weirdness/alienness of suburbia; which is way more inventive and fun and interesting and smart and less problematic than just doing the same shit but calling your songs "Colonizer" and "Look at Your Hands"

A lot of people interviewing / discussing her sound as if they've never heard Gangsta, Doorstep, etc.

I don't think she's made anything that is considerably more 'problematic' than Listening Wind, though, Whiney.

I was watching a Fear of Music tour show on YouTube, and I guess Belew has hinted at it in interviews but for some reason (maybe because of their nerdy student image) watching it hit me at how coked up everyone was, and then like their whole brittle manic hyper funk is such coke music

also whiney otm

To call using certain time signatures “colonialism” is so over the top

Where did she say this?

she was talking shit about YYZ

The quote about colonialism deserves to be here in full:

With all the compassion in my heart, I just want to say to white people sampling others' music: what you're engaging in is colonialism. Name it for what it is. Especially given the power dynamic today, with greater restrictions on entering the U.S. There's so much less access for musicians of color to say, "Hey, glad you like it! Now I get to make money touring in your country."

Also, like, it's good that Merrill is thinking about this stuff, and if this was just an essay on the Talkhouse or a Marc Maron interview or something, it would be rad. But once you writes and record and market and do multiple interviews and tour a indie rock song suite about white privilige it's like, uh, did you skip the workshop on colonialism's relationship to capital?

Like between this and Yo La Tengo calling their album "There's a Riot Goin' On" it's like, maybe well-meaning indie rock whites should just take a knee and sit out 2018

all of garbus' work has had these principles at heart and she's been grappling with the issues from day one.
this is me and her from eight years ago:

Tofu - Your music touches on issues of gender and class, but it seems to me that the elephant in the room on the bird-brains album is race: you're a white woman, generally playing with a white band...

Merrill - ...playing urban music, African-influenced music. It's a fair point. Before I started making music at all, issues of race and ethnicity were on my mind all the time so when I started making music, it was my way of making the decision to take the plunge and dive into... well, dive into "It", whatever "It" is. To start the conversation that says: Yes, I am influenced by this other world that is not my world. And yes, somebody should have a problem with me making money off this music. Because _I_ have a problem with it and I want to be part of the conversation about how America interacts with and appropriates music from the rest of the world.

I spent the first part of my twenties extremely depressed, ashamed and guilty because I had just gone to Africa and I couldn't help feeling indirectly responsible for the ruin of another country. When I was in Kenya, it was so very clear that America was actively aiding a cycle that sucked out resources and art but left the powerless even more powerless. As an idealistic, upper-middle-class, white, American twenty year old trying to engage this outside culture, I didn't know what to do with that information. This current phase of my life, as a musician, is me coming to terms with that shame and trying to find my place in two worlds that matter to me. So when people say to me "Oh, you're doing African music", I sort of cringe because I know that I know so little. I have a lot of love for Fela Kuti and Miriam Makeba and many, many other artists but I know almost nothing about the vast and important musical history of a people that I'm basically thieving from. I'm stealing the heart of someone else's music. And we all do. It's tough.

My response is that instead of feeling stagnant and ashamed about my fears and guilt about those things, I try to keep moving and growing and creating as best as I can to help make that conversation happen.

Tofu - I do feel you grappling with those issues in your work, but there seems to be very little of it plainly present; your lyrics are quite personal but not very political.

Merrill - I would say that I have to begin with myself, that these liberal ideas are first and foremost going to have to come through the filter of my personal experience. If you were looking for something more explicit, I would direct you to lines like "They're dying outside" in FIYA and to the dada retelling of my African experiences in Hatari. There are hints here and there. But no, I'm not a preacher and where I'm at right now as a musician and a songwriter, I feel safer talking about my own experiences. Just lately, I've been approached about doing collaborations with rap artists, with African artists and that's very exciting to me. Maybe soon I'll have the opportunity to engender those relationships that have been on my mind for so long and we can share what we all have to offer.

From overbearing white liberal guilt to 311, this topic is thoroughly nauseating.

Cheers.

forks are you saying she's always been down, down?

i'm saying this isn't news or requiring of a new thread (or that article, which i am gonna read on the train now).

honestly, she seems like she's generally a good, well meaning person who is at least trying to think about the place and impact of her music in the world
but in the current climate it's pretty much impossible to try to think about anything or make any statement, well meaning or not, unless it's 100% perfect and stands up to one zillion people online who will read it line by line and dissect it to bits

it's like i dunno eric clapton JUST EXPRESSED REGRET for his enoch powell comments like a month ago

(i am not saying this as a big fan either, i haven't been able to vibe w/it for the most part)

i just wish people were cooler now. bow wow wow were so cool.

Also, like, it's good that Merrill is thinking about this stuff, and if this was just an essay on the Talkhouse or a Marc Maron interview or something, it would be rad. But once you writes and record and market and do multiple interviews and tour a indie rock song suite about white privilige it's like, uh, did you skip the workshop on colonialism's relationship to capital?

― mag gerwig! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, January 20, 2018 7:15 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I guess the argument would be that if you are white then white privilege shapes every aspect of your life and is unavoidable, so *any* album she makes would be just as much "about" white privilege, just not explicitly? though the logical endpoint of this line of thinking is probably that you stop writing/recording/playing/giving interviews altogether?

glad it's taken almost 150 posts to get here, well done!

"the logical endpoint of this line of thinking is probably that you stop writing/recording/playing/giving interviews altogether?"

now we're getting somewhere.

On the whole, I think it would be beneficial for any musician as up their own butt as this Tune Yards person is to stop doing what they're doing and seriously consider another path in life.

So, yes: please stop. Please.

The album is on spotify, anyone can just check it out. And it's not a 'song suite' about white privilege, it's an indie rock album with political lyrics.

And we could discuss the art instead of this just being one more thread of white guys yelling at a woman that she should shut up.

Adventures In Whineyland vol. 415

i didn't even mean tuneyards specifically should stop writing/recording/etc. i meant most people. okay, maybe just current american indie rock people...

This whole thread is such a beautiful illustration of her points about white fragility, you'd almost think it's a performance piece, though. But I've lived in the US long enough to know that it's not an act.

I cannot handle all the negative vibe merchants
Is that all you have in you per chance
So much angst and pain it’s so wack
You should take a tip from the one Frank Black
Play some pachinko play some parcheesi
Cause all the angst shit is just cheesy

i think for me its maybe more of a class thing than anything else. the people who can afford to record/tour/promote/get their shit out there/appear in the new york times(gasoline is expensive!) are often these marginally quirky middle of the road people from middle or upper middle who are just boring and not interesting to me. (but i'm really old and weird. and they seem to appeal to people who are less old and less weird. i know a lot of weirdos who could probably do more interesting stuff/get heard by more people and they just struggle to live/pay rent and when they do tour they make zero money and they will never make any money really. art is becoming a luxury item in these united states. like in olden times. which is probably why i just listen to new rap and metal as far as new music goes. those people will make great stuff no matter what because they have to and because they were born weird.)

the plaints by quirky MOR upper middle class whites will forever fascinate this gay Cuban so

my favorite artists of 2017: lil debbie, lady leshurr, nadia rose, paigey cakey, honey cocaine, stefflon don. for the record. (though i did listen to a disconcerting amount of player, firefall, ambrosia, and gino vanelli this year as well. i found a yachtload of sealed stuff in the basement of the store. but they were all way cool and tight as fuck.)

This whole thread is such a beautiful illustration of her points about white fragility,

That's funny that you take it that way as, from the very beginning, I saw nothing except a self-obsessed musician who takes themselves way too seriously rambling pointlessly about things they believe will make them appear profound.

As it goes, though: if you can't dazzle 'em brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.

idk those quotes forks posted just seem like brushing it off by doing that rhetorical trick of vacuously stating 'i want to start a conversation' and then, like, not actually saying or doing anything. same thing every white 19 year old in a punk band with fashy imagery says when they get called out. i don't even care about the appropriation but the extent to which she's having her cake and eating it too rubs me wrong, and seems emblematic of something. like saying this seems so hypocritical

To start the conversation that says: Yes, I am influenced by this other world that is not my world. And yes, somebody should have a problem with me making money off this music. Because _I_ have a problem with it and I want to be part of the conversation about how America interacts with and appropriates music from the rest of the world.

...by, personally instigating said appropriation? she seems to want some middle ground between 'making problematic art and standing by it' and 'not making problematic art' where you can acknowledge it's problematic ("Merrill, you are racist... So how does that feel?") and then continue to profit off it. i don't even find her work problematic in an offensive way (it's skin-crawingly embarrassing obv) and would prob defend her artistic right to make it if i liked it

her most offensive aesthetic decision imo was naming an album 'nikki nack', the very sound & feel of which brings me out in shivers

to further complicate this often times I feel like I'm hearing nu indie acts that are actually more influenced by stuff like Graceland and Remain in Light than the original sources

how does one _not_ be influenced by marginalized cultures, anyway? yes clearly all artists are in complete conscious control of everything they do, so the only ethical thing is to listen to, i don't know, soca or whatever and say "I SHALL HAVE TO DO MY BEST TO MAKE SURE THAT I DO NOT SOUND ANYTHING LIKE THAT."

of course it's easier still to just confine oneself to only experiencing works of hegemonic discourse. that way one doesn't accidentally wind up committing an act of cultural appropriation.

there's nothing wrong with making music influenced by other cultures, and those who would claim there is because it's "cultural appropriation" are just reinforcing ethno-nationalist ideas (not that there aren't ways to misappropriate things but i don't think she's at all guilty of that). it's less good though that she feels this overwhelming guilt about it which doesn't really accomplish anything except some embarrassing lyrics.

Popular music is generally speaking all appropriative of Black popular music. Some of it does so in ways which are socially 🤔 and some of it does so in ways which are less so. As for her face paint twee putamayo comp pastiche, ymmv

Shitty thread

I haven't heard a fuckin note of this but I'm thinking about how Talking Heads ca. Remain in Light/Stop Making Sense managed to offset/own/maybe comment on their pilfering of African music by Byrne dancing in these weird, floppy ways and singing about the weirdness/alienness of suburbia; which is way more inventive and fun and interesting and smart and less problematic than just doing the same shit but calling your songs "Colonizer" and "Look at Your Hands"

― mag gerwig! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, January 20, 2018 8:15 AM (yesterday)

nothing at all to do with nostalgia - nope.

Whiney G. Weingarten wrote this on thread Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008? on board I Love Music on Jan 28, 2008

You know "I Know What I Know," off Graceland, where it talks about the cinematographer's party and the Fulbright scholarship? I get the feeling that Vampire Weekend think that's REALLY FUCKING CLEVER to mix uptown intellectual horseshit (see "Oxford Comma") with afrobeat.

Man, this is one strange thread.

who am I to blow against the wind?

No harm in lurking

We’re trapped in hell

If that were so we'd still be talking about 311.

merrill garbus, she always tells the truth

unlike that liar David Byrne with his fake giant suit

it's actually a very tiny suit

The suit is actually normal sized, it's David Byrne that's tiny!

take a look at his hands!

Tried listening to this. It is Not For Me. I don't like her voice, the cheap electro/house music (ooh, a sudden burst of jarring noise! How "transgressive"!) is done better by randos on Spotify playlists I shuffle, and the lyrics are banal, half-baked slogans for critics to fixate on. The appropriation narrative is particularly dumb, because every country on Earth has dorks with laptops making music that sounds just like this. Really, this whole album seems like it was created with the goal of being interviewed on NPR. So, success?

Have you tried 311? They will literally never be interviewed on NPR.

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/09/535768797/311s-nick-hexum-after-3-decades-its-all-about-the-fans

We were happy to find out the other day that we are the fourth-longest-running band of original members out today, with U2 being the first, Radiohead being the second, De La Soul being the third, and we're the fourth. So that's really cool company to be in.

i wanted to question his rankings but...Radiohead was formed in 1985???

Goddamit NPR. I'm sending back my mug.

We were happy to find out the other day that we are the fourth-longest-running band of original members out today, with U2 being the first, Radiohead being the second, De La Soul being the third, and we're the fourth. So that's really cool company to be in.

The most interesting thing about this list is that ZZ Top (same members since 1970!) don't count because a couple of no-name schmucks passed through the ranks in their first year of existence, before they even had a record deal.

No results found for "african rock critic".

Popular music is generally speaking all appropriative of Black popular music. Some of it does so in ways which are socially 🤔 and some of it does so in ways which are less so.

this is otm

white artists trying to sort of position themselves culturally by acknowledging this in their press cycles are both 1) an encouraging sign, discursively and 2) a little embarrassing, usually

you overhear this chatter at cinematographers' parties iirc

To answer omar little's question, yes, 1985.

the logical endpoint of this line of thinking is that everybody should stop posting

not yet

the discourse

If an artist provoked the discourse and no one notices did it really happen

And we could discuss the art instead of this just being one more thread of white guys yelling at a woman that she should shut up.

Tattoo it on my face

Also what! You live in America now? let’s get one of them bloody marys made with aquavit that JG Mellon calls ‘Danish’

I walked off to look for America, but I could not see my future within it's arms.

Lol at “discuss the art”

In 2018 the only way to get people taking about an indie pop record is to link it to privilege debate or #metoo or Trumptalk

Sick sick bit, just can't quit

Garbus has been writing the same lyrics for almost a decade, though.

it would be cool if she would just hype a few African artists she loves. people sometimes make fun of Paul Simon or Talking Heads or Peter Gabriel or Joni Mitchell for appropriation but I've ended up listening to a bunch of African artists just because I learned about them from these guys (even if just from the liner notes).

also I was happy that Taylor Swift quoted "Freak Out" on her new album, 311 is the new heart music

She literally has her own radio show where she does this...

https://www.redbullradio.com/shows/tune-yards-claw/episodes/moor-mother-nkisi

d-40: "Popular music is generally speaking all appropriative of Black popular music"

i would be v interested to hear thoughts from d-40 or anyone else on why they think this is. the broader the answer, the better

With Jazz it's broadly true, but there are a load of other influences in there, son Cubano (partially African itself), marching bands, possibly even Irish folk music.

https://www.tagg.org/others/dvorak1895.html

hmm that red bull link is cool but it's like, a mix she made of a bunch of performers. i was expecting it would be a show where the performers would actually perform.

also it seems like playing records on a radio station is literal sampling the music lol

She also did a thing for "Bullseye" recently where she talks about Johnny Clegg's "Moliva": http://www.maximumfun.org/bullseye/bullseye-jesse-thorn-errol-morris-merrill-garbus-tune-yards

Obviously RBMA (or anyone else) giving her the chance to record a concert with some African artists would be rad but logistically speaking I dunno if that's the standard we need to hold ppl to, mixes and shout-outs are valuable to get ppl into this music.

also it seems like playing records on a radio station is literal sampling the music lol

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Monday, January 22, 2018 9:31 AM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is such a weird take, how does your mind work?

It's not a concert show, but the two artists in question collaborated on a new tune.

i would be v interested to hear thoughts from d-40 or anyone else on why they think this is. the broader the answer, the better

― ogmor, Monday, January 22, 2018 9:13 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There are vast tracts if academia devoted to this but the short broad answers are “colonialism and slavery”

it would be cool if she would just hype a few African artists she loves. people sometimes make fun of Paul Simon or Talking Heads or Peter Gabriel or Joni Mitchell for appropriation but I've ended up listening to a bunch of African artists just because I learned about them from these guys (even if just from the liner notes).

― droit au butt (Euler), Monday, January 22, 2018 9:04 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

TBF one of her better points was that a restrictive visa system seems to have made it harder for foreign artists to tour the US and bank on that exposure. Although at the same time, my guess is it's not the artists sampled by Paul Simon-level artists who have the hardest time. And anyway, it's not like the sampling artists are participating in making the visa system restrictive

rolling self-flagellation 2018

it would be cool if she would just hype a few African artists she loves.

She does do that! isn't that cool?!

http://www.okayafrica.com/tune-yards-merrill-garbus-africa-in-your-earbuds/

Good piece

https://theoutline.com/post/3009/tune-yards-i-can-feel-you-creep-into-my-private-life-review?zd=1

I took "Popular music is generally speaking all appropriative of Black popular music" to be a statement about a continuing ongoing process of development rather than just a statement about historical origins (which I've read plenty about). would you centre its american-ness in the same way?

She does do that! isn't that cool?!

http://www.okayafrica.com/tune-yards-merrill-garbus-africa-in-your-earbuds/

― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Monday, January 22, 2018 10:16 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok that is cool! I can't make myself listen to an artist who spells her band name like that but I can check out the African artists she's hyping at least

African pop music slays; everyone knows this. They play William Onyeabor at Panera now. I went through a short phase three years ago where I didn’t want to listen to anything but Afrobeat and Highlife etc. It’s not surprising to me that tons of white artists want to emulate this kind of music. (Want to use this moment to put in a word for Super Mama Djombi.)

It might be my own deficiency but I am really, really turned off by Garbus’s felt need to engage with this music hyperselfconsciously “as a white person” — to constantly ask herself what it means “as a white person” to be inspired by music created by black people. It feels condescending, like she thinks she needs to “protect” this creative work from herself. It just gets everything backwards: really infectious music is impossible not to appropriate, not because it is weak, but because it is strong. The music has captured her, not the other way around.

She gets to profit from it while others don’t because the world is fucked but I don’t think it’s going to get any better by white people singing about how they can “smell the blood” in their “white woman’s voice” or whatever — twisting the process of cultural exchange into something perverse.

*super mama djombo not djombi.

Wow treeship, really surprising us all with those thoughts so out of character. What a way to contribute to this discussion.

It might be my own deficiency but I am really, really turned off by Garbus’s felt need to engage with this music hyperselfconsciously “as a white person” — to constantly ask herself what it means “as a white person” to be inspired by music created by black people. It feels condescending, like she thinks she needs to “protect” this creative work from herself. It just gets everything backwards: really infectious music is impossible not to appropriate, not because it is weak, but because it is strong. The music has captured her, not the other way around.

She gets to profit from it while others don’t because the world is fucked but I don’t think it’s going to get any better by white people singing about how they can “smell the blood” in their “white woman’s voice” or whatever — twisting the process of cultural exchange into something perverse.

― treeship 2, Tuesday, January 23, 2018 7:59 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but what about the album?

So her name really is Garbus? I thought you were all just dissing her there for a while.

just because it's well-intentioned doesn't mean it's not utterly useless, she should have handed Rubinos her studio time instead

The album is kinda boring, though? I'll always love whokill for the awesome layered patterns, but everything she has made since than has seemed a bit simple. Thing was, she definitely drew on African influences, but she also filtered it through her own process, making it different. Seeing her live was so awe-inspiring.

It does annoy me to see reviews complaining that her music used to be a 'tonic' but now it's not, and that's bad. White Americans wanting to be confronted with their privilege only in ways that makes them feel good.

I like this album pretty well. On first few go rounds nothing grabbed me as much as the catchiest stuff on the first two, but it's good music for driving or doing the dishes or whatever.

Content-wise I think this is otm: white artists trying to sort of position themselves culturally by acknowledging this in their press cycles are both 1) an encouraging sign, discursively and 2) a little embarrassing, usually

I'm assuming she knows she's at least risking embarrassment, but she still thinks it's important to be upfront about all of it. The outline.com review posted above makes the good and obvious point that her music is most universal when it's about stuff other than being white. But I do think that's kind of a catch-22 -- don't acknowledge privilege, get called out for being unaware; acknowledge privilege, get called out for having the privilege to acknowledge privilege. idk, I think it's probably good in the broad scheme for people to try to wrestle with this stuff. Seen as part of broader shifts rather than as some standalone thing that's going to make or break the cultural discourse, it's more healthy than not. Mostly though I like her/their sounds and grooves.

my heroes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GICR7qSzWg8

"spirit, not location, is the essence of our theme/why not come and join us in our own dream"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH4YpT4rrrw

definitely she should be like Paul Simon who screwed Los Lobos and African contributors out of songwriting credits then almost got himself killed purposefully pissing off the ANC by breaking the boycott of South Africa

tbh that was a ballsy move, Paul Simon seems a lot more dangerous as "guy who dodged ANC hit squads" than "short-ass songwriter jerk"

I want to thank this thread for the excellent turn away from cultural appropriation discourse to 311 discourse; but also, to curse this thread for making me laugh so hard this morning that my back went into spasms and is apparently gonna be bothering me all day now >:O

xpost he's just lucky he didn't get murked because Try Little Steven called it in off

"So her name really is Garbus? I thought you were all just dissing her there for a while."

yes? I don't know why you'd think that was a diss

we're all bozos on this garbus

the garbus is what oscar the grouch drives

I was more surprised that her name was Merrill.

the only people with that name I've run into are around my age and from somewhere northeast
*rolls wikipedia dice*
born 1979, lived in NYC and Connecticut, bingo

I'm assuming she knows she's at least risking embarrassment, but she still thinks it's important to be upfront about all of it. The outline.com review posted above makes the good and obvious point that her music is most universal when it's about stuff other than being white. But I do think that's kind of a catch-22 -- don't acknowledge privilege, get called out for being unaware; acknowledge privilege, get called out for having the privilege to acknowledge privilege. idk, I think it's probably good in the broad scheme for people to try to wrestle with this stuff. Seen as part of broader shifts rather than as some standalone thing that's going to make or break the cultural discourse, it's more healthy than not. Mostly though I like her/their sounds and grooves.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, January 23, 2018 7:19 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my feeling is, the notion of confronting & wrestling w/ privilege does not need to be the literal text of your work; it should instead inform the process of creating your work. racism is famously "a distraction" which forces its victims to wrestle with its consequences before they can do their own work; confronting privilege should be about reversing that dynamic, so the privileged person has to wrestle with racism's implications before deploying their work. But if it becomes the text, it's just creating *more* work for the racialized subject (as described in the review linked upthread)

this is not an absolute rule, but I think it explains what feels 'off' about projects like this and macklemore, which center an assumed white listener

hiring black performers, artists, working with black PR people, managers etc.: good

writing a song about how you're really thinking about this stuff:????

don't make the fact that you've wrestled with privilege a part of your 'brand' unless by that very act it's actual giving ppl some material benefit... idk just feels kind of exploitative otherwise

imo

good post deej

xp

nb this is not to say that her music does not appeal to black listeners or something, i'm thinking of this more from a process pov than from the product one...haven't heard this album

this is not an absolute rule, but I think it explains what feels 'off' about projects like this and macklemore, which center an assumed white listener

the central message of a lot of these 'how to be a good white ally' guides like the workshop she went to is that the most useful thing you can do as a white ally is talk to less enlightened white people afaict, so I guess this album is her version of that? (same for Macklemore's stuff is this vein) Possibly the problem is that "maintain contact with your Trump-voting relatives/workmates and challenge them when they say racist things rather than just avoiding them" doesn't 'scale up' to a pop star's relationship with their listeners?

i think public artwork and conversations with human beings are really different things; and there's an economic aspect to your work that doesn't exist for your conversations (or i.e. these conversations on this message board. I write about rap music, but i tend not to bring explicit discussions of my own allyship into those conversations bc its a different contract with the reader: 1) lots of people reading about rap aren't white & don't care about my own personal relationship with race, they want to know why they should care about fredo santana or whatever, and 2) it would feel weird on my part to make my personal neuroses/handwringing about that stuff a part of the brand on which i've built my career. This isn't to say that I never talk about race in my writing (i do all the time ) i just try to do so w/ the assumption that i'm not always writing for a white audience

which is to say i think its also worth pointing out "Talking about race" and "talking about how to be a good white ally" are not necessarily synonymous, and one can connect with um trump voting relatives by example as much as by um instruction

Or by uppercut

lol... i think uppercut is prob more effective than lecturing sometimes too

To be fair, if you read the lyrics to the album (as opposed to her interviews about the album), there's very little explicit "whiteness" stuff. There's one line -- "all I know is white centrality" -- and then the song "Colonizer," which is basically about being trapped yourself in constructed race and identity. Most of the rest is pretty abstract and could be about race but also about a lot of other ways of struggling to connect and communicate. So I don't think she's made some kind of "Whiteness 4 Dummies" record.

good posts deej

Ya good posts deej

thanks *revels in rush of allyship dopamine*

+3 ally points

90k+bennies to u ally online savings account