Class etc. Pt. 3 - why does African American audiences completely ignore indie, prog etc?

Why don't black people buy white music? Well... why would they? They have a lot more reason to identify with music from their own race then white people do, and exclusively at that. The opressed/opressor dynamic is still very much in place. And the old saw that all white music came from black music has a lot of truth in it. So... the question really should be, give one good reason why blacks should be listening to white music.

not that you don't have a point. and some very thick glasses.

hip-hop is filled with prog and 70s-soft-rock and rawwwwk shit, via samples and a very "experimental" ethic (song interruptions, codas, spoken-word/skits, etc. Moody Blues were responsible for more than they knew.

And Geir, Genesis CREATED both hip-hop and punk. By sucking.

but this has been discussed at length before (the 'Why does black peoples never want to ROCK?' thread i believe)

give one good reason why blacks should be listening to white music

part of the process of escaping that opressed/opressor dynamic would INCLUDE losing this notion of 'blackness/whiteness' in music generally. forget where it came from, whether that means Europe. Africa, America or whatever. forget whatever connotations occur due to preconceptions, stereotypes, the media etc. and learning to appreciate the art for what it is more than what it represents or can be considered as representing. of course if you can't relate to it then fine, but there's no need to always try and look for music you CAN relate to to be able to appreciate or even love it.

using that same generalisation, do they buy ANYTHING? can they? i thought it was supposed to be all white and Asian kids buying DMX and 50 Cent?

These guys are/were all musicians. They are not representative of the audiences.

Plus, it seems black audiences are actually less likely to buy records by white acts these days than they were in the 60s. How many African Americans dig Matchbox 20, Hootie & The Blowfish or Counting Crows?
(And, yes, those three bands suck, but that's irrelevant anyway because there are obviously a lot of people - most of them white - who seem to like them)

This is the current Norwegian Top 40 albums list:
http://lista.vg.no/show_list_spes.jsp?listType=2&byweek=vis

I don't think "my parents" are responsible for the rock records at #1 and #3 in that list..

There are African immigrants here too, remember, and most of them will buy exclusively "black" music.

Only, those who dig White Stripes (and I am absolutely no fan of that overrated band) are almost exclusively white people, which was also the case with grunge and Britpop in the 90s.

My 27-yr-old, mother of three, black co-worker from "the 'hood" (aka Oakland) likes both the White Stripes and the Hives. And she hates 50 Cent! And Puffy! But we both like Missy and Outkast...

A couple of anecdotal examples: In college in the mid-Nineties I was on the committee to book bands for the school's annual spring festival. It was acknowledged that the best way to please the most people was with a cross-over Native Tongues-syle hip-hop group. If we'd filled the bill with indie-rock, most of the African-AMerican students would have been alienated, but the indie rock kids would mostly be just as happy with the hip-hop act.

In the last month I went to a 50 Cent concert and Queens of the Stone Age concert. A lot more white faces at 50 cent than black faces at QOTSA, and this has been my experience at pretty much all other concerts as far as race/genre dynamic.

Why? A lot of reasons I suppose, and I think the first Kenan post gets at some of them. Maybe I'll think about it some more and propose a theory or two.

Black folks don't buy "white music" because it's been what the mainstream has offered for so long -- on TV and the radio ("classic rock" stations) -- not knowing that most of "white music" has African-American origins or derivations.

Consequently, many black folks shun a majority of "white music" -- derogating black folks that listen to "white music" -- while many white folks snap up lowest common denominator "black music" with each group unaware that they're being manipulated by rich folks.

And before you excoriate me, keep in mind that all I ever needed to know about race relations I learned from "Fear Of A Black Planet" by Public Enemy.

haha!

That must means Toni Basil's Mickey IS DIE GESAMSTWERKE

I understand this is the DSM-IV definition of a mentalist.

Virtue is a patience.

What the fuck are you talking about?? "Obsession With Race"???

Personally I don't give a FUCK what skin colour people have got. I care about MUSIC! Eminem and El-P are just as crap and musically worthless as Public Enemy and Jay-Z while on the other hand, Seal and Tasmin Archer have both made a lot of great melodic music. This isn't a matter of race it is a matter of music. What music should be and what it should not be. And most, of all, it is a matter of defending the most beautiful invention Mankind has ever made: The full tempered melodic/harmonic music system!

i dunno about indian classical music (is sundar around?). but lots of european classical is based on "traditional" european music -- e.g., chopin's mazurkas, the mighty five (who were all about integrating russian folk-music into classical form), beethoven's "ode to joy" (which is, essentially, a beer-hall singalong), mozart's the magic flute (which is more of an eighteenth century Broadway music than an opera, per se).

1. Nelly
2. Cotton Mather
3. Flaming Lips
4. Alicia Keys
5. Outkast
6. Jayhawks
7. Travis
8. Destiny's Child
9. Britney Spears
10.Coldplay
11.Eminem
12.The Rapture
13.Missy Elliott
14.El-P
15.Stereophonics
16.Beck
17.Jay-Z
18.Doves
19.Christina Aguilera
20.Robbie Williams

That is, having a mixture of different styles, not just one style dominating. If, say, 40-50 per cent of the Top 20 list had consisted of strong melodic music, then there would have been no need to worry, really. The melodic/harmonic tradition would survive and would still be vital and alive, not a museum piece. What I fear is that this wonderful melodic/harmonic system (like I say, the most beautiful invention ever by Mankind) will not be used for creating new music anymore, which would be too bad because new generations need new songs to sing.

And to answer the "Don't you ever dance?"-question. Well, "Don't you ever sing or play an instrument?"

Where have all the flowers gone?

-- Geir Hongro"

I've just been looking over the American top 40 singles. Please tell me what Alicia Keys, 3 Doors Down, Dido, Linkin Park, Jay-z, Jessica Simpson and Matchbox Twenty have in common, because I can't seem to figure it out...

uh... Seal?????

-- Geir Hongro (geirhon...), January 26th, 2004.

They do you clown.

As for military drumming, I am not a military expert, but it probably had a function, and wasn't meant to be enjoyed as stand-alone music.

I wouldn't consider metal and hip-hop a particularly wide range of music. I guess one thing here is that 13-14 year-old boys these days are a lot more afraid of listening to typical "feminine" music than 13-14-year-old girls are. The girls' listening habits (which have usually always been about mainly ballads, but also a generally openmindedness towards anything that they do appear to hear combined with an unwillingness to turn into "music nerds" to get to hear more stuff) haven't changed all that much, I guess.

So this is essentially all nostalgia for an idyllic childhood.

It's a start, maybe there's hope for him yet, poor bastard.

Anyway, http://www.webstreetcafe.com/twocents/w06mimi.htm (and they're wrong about the Janet single of course, it's ace)

If it exists, I bet it ignores indie, prog, etc.

* - Indicates a good suggestion for the replacement of the word race in the discussion of your topic.

Thanks,
The White Boy

As usual, I find "Geir" completely full of shit. OK, wrongheaded. What in the world is he talking about? Black people like melody. The Chi-Lites weren't exactly a "groove" band, Geir; they were a pop band with melodies. The Beatles "grooved," Geir. You know, "Got to Get You Into My Life," "Drive My Car."

Black people sing all kinds of songs, too. I mean, really, Geir, you are so guilty of thinking in a ridiculous, and I must say racist (you probably don't mean to, but I can only say that you must not know any better, given your extremely blinkered taste in pop music, and your goddam Beatles fixation, or whatever it is, which is so tiresome) way. This whole discussion is beneath contempt.