Is classism ever justified?

Something I've thought about re: the 'unmasking' of Banksy/Burial ("hang on, turns out he's a middle class white boy - now I don't like his stuff any more"). This does seem to be a perennial of music journalism, Clash onwards - is it always bullshit or often justified? Obviously there's cases for both extremes (great tunes by aristocrats vs. posh kids slumming it for credibility points), but where lies the middle ground?

<stirs shit>

Hmmmm. Let's compare Obama (thoughtful leadership from an aristocrat) versus George Bush (posh kid slumming it for credibility points).

Obama is an aristocrat?

uh sry for not being constructive

Harvard educated? Check. University of Chicago employed? Double check. Labeled an elitist? Triple check.

And here was me thinking we'd talk about tunes.

the professional/graduate-educated class, the management class, military legacy families, and the remnants of "society" (the the DAR, the social register) are all interesting but none of them is an aristocracy. so basically mottdeterre stfu

Basically, has a musician's privileged background ever been a valid downer to the music they make? It seems a very British notion.

It is.

not for me. sry for a short answer but ive gotta read.
this is a good topic though i hope people have some good answers by tomorrow

It is a British notion I meant.

"hang on, turns out he's a middle class white boy - now I don't like his stuff any more"

Care to find someone who has actually said this or anything like this, please?

The only people who delight in "exposing" Burial and Banksy are the Daily Mail, the message being "Ha! So much for your working class heroes!" See also: 5 million references to Tim Westwood's dad being a vicar. But they're making a false assumption that certain kinds of "underground" culture must be working-class, and that any middle-class artist who presumes to venture there must be some kind of fake. It's an absurd, outdated kind of social determinism. I don't think most listeners care either way, unless there is a deliberate attempt to deceive the public, and even then they probably don't mind if the records are good enough. And didn't most people assume Banksy was middle-class anyway?

Right:

Bob Dylan.

Many people turned off by the notion he wasn't called that really, plus that he was a white jewish boy from a fairly affluent background, rather than a poor etc.

Eventually, most of those people found out they were wrong to be turned off.

Ha! I've seen that very same Daily Mail story (xp) about Dido, 'succeeding against the odds as a white middle-class girl in a working-class world'

The class thing is basically a stick with which to beat people whom you don't like anyway. Dido, Martin Amis, Tony Benn and Shane MacGowan all went to the same school, but only the first two get a kicking for it

Banksy:

Did anyone actually think he was a black/poor/street/etc?

The cost of paint and materials would have been prohibitive anyway...

Shane MacGowan: Did get it, a bit. Same as John Mellor.

I didn't realize Burial has some kind of class reputation. Though it's probably due to the fact I live in the US, I don't think there's anything about, say, Untrue, that suggests some kind of "working class hero" presentation. It certainly doesn't wear "working class" notions as lyrically as a Bruce Springsteen song, or as musically as something like The Clash.

I don't think classism in music is justified in the sense of, "Oh my god, he's white. I no longer like him." But that's because I think music tends to follow directly from class. I think someone from an underprivileged background is going to make different sounding music than someone from a privileged background. Even if someone from an impoverished area of the Appalachians turns out to be a classical music phenom, you've got to imagine that there's a style present that follows from their upbringing. And if someone finds music from a particular class more appealing (like, maybe you liked blues better than showtunes), I don't think there's anything wrong with that kind of classism. People who respond to Bruce because they relate to his lyrics (actually, I don't know if this ever happens anymore) might be disillusioned if they found out Bruce was a trust fund baby. But that said, I have a hard time buying that he'd be able to successful communicate with his listeners if that were the case.

That said, were there people who thought that Burial had some kind of working class sympathies? When I hear "Archangel," I don't hear working class. But there might be UK tropes that I'm missing. I can't imagine an American listener identifying it with a working class archetype tho.

Also, in the case of Dylan, if someone from an affluent background is able to identify hard enough with a class different than the one they were born in, it's certainly possible for their class status to change. It generally happens upwardly (at least speaking as the descendent of recent immigrants), where the family becomes more bourgeois as they get more education, earn more money. But I don't see why it can't happen in reverse. When I saw Dylan drunk and performing at a Harley convention, he was definitely in /that/ class. He wasn't slumming or posing.

Dido, 'succeeding against the odds as a white middle-class girl in a working-class world'

.. making middle-class sounding music for middle-class people. (and that's not a dis fwiw)

Actually, Dido is way past and way posher than 'middle-class' but hey.

Dubstep like anything that evolved out of UK Garage has a lot of residual black working class cultural baggage associated with it but as far as the crowd goes it's pretty open and mixed. I don't really make any assumptions about the background of the producers, partly because it doesn't really matter. Anonymous dance culture innit?

(I'm not sure baggage is the right word, I'm not using it as a pejorative in any case)

I mean, I tend to assume anyone doing that triumphant Daily Mail unmasking a) doesn't really know what dubstep is, and b) didn't know who Burial was until five minutes after the Mercury shortlist came out. So the kneejerk assumption is "this is something scary that we don't understand, it must be bad, oh hang on look it's one of our own, phew."

Mordy, it's not a US/UK thing. Even over here, I never got the impression Burial had any kind of class reputation prior to his unmasking. The areas of London his music evokes - say, Brixton, Dalston, Hackney - are a mixture of races and classes. You can find a middle-class white guy in these places as easily (well, almost) as a working-class black guy - they'd be living in different kinds of house but they'd be walking down the same street. It would be different if he were writing about crack-dealing but this is a guy with a song called Night Bus, so he's hardly gunning for outlaw cool.

"The class thing is basically a stick with which to beat people whom you don't like anyway."

Yeah, this pretty much sums it up.

Side question; Outside of music, where else does working class associate with quality? Does it elsewhere?

Also, historical question: How did dubstep emerge from garage rock? I don't hear the sonic affinities.

Side question; Outside of music, where else does working class associate with quality? Does it elsewhere?

― Mordy, Wednesday, 19 November 2008 10:00 (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Sports, craftsmen, message board posters

Sports seems more like correlation than quality. I've never heard someone be bad mouthed for being from too nice a background. Tho I may not hang out with enough of those fans (and soccer may different - I only know American sports).

Care to find someone who has actually said this or anything like this, please?

Oasis said similar things about Blur during the "band war".

this, being "hang on, turns out he's a middle class white boy - now I don't like his stuff any more"

Which is not what they said. They were fairly supportive of each other until the 'Roll vs House" single situ.

How did dubstep emerge from garage rock? I don't hear the sonic affinities.

UK garage. Bit different.

I can't imagine anyone saying that, just because no one is dumb enough to admit to that kind of superficiality (liking something and then disliking it because you discover who made it). But it seems pretty obvious that it might happen. If someone listens to a lot of hip-hop because they like the associations of black culture, and they discover that a particular artist they like isn't black (or is from a comfortable upbringing), they might cease to enjoy that music. But I'm sure they'd never say it out loud.

Thanks, Michael. I see the association now. Tho Dubstep coming from Garage seems like an explicitly bourgeois evolution. to me, at least sonically.

Sonically speaking, Burial's stuff is a post-sound - taking elements of dNb, garage, dubstep but not sounding wholly like those genres. That allows a certain demographic to dip into it and not having to possess a broad knowledge of those scenes - the same people might have bought a Tricky album at some point.

I like Burial's music although I will say that it contains an aspect that makes it commercially palatable. Even going back to his first album, I (as I'm sure many others can) can hear elements of BoC / Aphex style IDM in amongst the ruff dred darkcore. The rectangular-glasses people are always gonna like his stuff more because of that and the filmic aspect of his sound, more than say Benga, Distance or Vex'd. I've read a few interviews and I don't really get a vibe of what type of golf club he belongs to.

So does everyone think he's middle class because he's white then?

Sonically speaking, Burial's stuff is a post-sound - taking elements of dNb, garage, dubstep but not sounding wholly like those genres. That allows a certain demographic to dip into it and not having to possess a broad knowledge of those scenes - the same people might have bought a Tricky album at some point.

Isn't dilettantism a luxury of the middle (and upper) class? Maybe the argument falls down here, but isn't this post-sound, exploratory, experimental type of music indicative of a non-working class musical connotation? (Or, at least, not the stereotypical expression of such?)

He went to the same west London school as Hot Chip didn't he? Which I suppose explains the presumption - though there are loads of (ex) council estates even in Putney.

I quite enjoyed the Petridis classist takedown of thingy from Razorlight the other week, who claims to be a rock and roll street-urchin while being a graduate of the same private school as John Betjeman.

I bow to no-one in my contempt for Johnny "Brown" Borrell, but as usual Petridis totally missed the point with that snark.

I don't really see what the problem is.

Pop is all about role playing so the background of the artist is pretty irrelevant.

Still plenty of council estates in Putney except they call it Roehampton.

^^^ This. Class criticisms = loving it authentic = oh fuck off you tedious gatekeeping dick. Apart from the huge areas that have to be deliberately over-looked to keep the stereotypes going. But then is it contradictory and mean-spirited of me to suggest that it isn't usually the working classes that give a toss about what's real?

Not mean-spirited, but I think wrong. I have lots of anecdotal evidence that suggests all sorts of classes are obsessed with what's real.

Well to put it another way, if we run with your dilettantism = middle/upper class argument, which we agree is sweeping stereotype but with potential kernel of something in it, I'd argue that curatorism is an equally class-based trait.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. But realness manifests in different ways among different social/class groups. Doesn't hip-hop have this conversation with itself often? The conversation might feature different language, but it's present.

I always think of "keeping it real" as a trope that's long since slipped its moorings, assuming it was ever tied down to anything in the first place. A lot of pop music, not least of all Hip Hop, plays with the fantasy of reality, the music shaping the listeners' reality just as much as the listeners' reality informing the music. But that's art in general isn't it? Arm-wrestle between rhetoric and something that we can't speak about without it becoming a version of rhetoric.

Right. I guess the most interesting case study there would be someone who creates a narrative of classism in his/her music, and then is revealed as a phony in that class distinction they themselves designed. Are they then alienated from their own fanbase, does the fanbase rally behind them, etc. ICP might actually be a good example of this sort of thing. But yeah, according to this definition, anyone who disliked Burial after his revelation would just be a tool. He wasn't (at least explicitly) creating any narrative of classism in his music, and, if anything, I think his eclecticism (and anxiety of influence) is a Middle Class narrative in-of-itself. So he is whom he's always portrayed himself to be.

you tedious gatekeeping dick

^ that's a fantastic insult

Which is not what they said. They were fairly supportive of each other until the 'Roll vs House" single situ.

― Mark G, Wednesday, 19 November 2008 10:21 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Plus I was talking about Burianksy anyway. If you took "anything like this" to encompass anyone who's ever cast class-based aspersions in the realm of music, yes I imagine you could construct a list

xpost to Mordy

There's always the get-out of songs being in character, tho. Rappers calling out other rappers on not being gangsta enough is standard knock-about business but I can't think of many examples where it's buried somebody's career of itself. Audiences are pretty sophisticated or careless or blasé about the realness as long as the records are good. Can't think of any genre where an "unmasking" has seriously damaged somebody's career, tbh.

Jentina?

That makes sense. It's not like any of the class issues are real. With few exceptions, all working class musicians are still playing into a hegemonic structure - the class stuff they are flirting with (say, Middle Class English musicians V. real, tough, working class musicians) is still all contained. They are all selling records, recording in a Capitalist market, etc. And none of them are offering class warfare, except as escapism. So it makes sense that any revelation of non-realness would not make a difference. It's just transgressing the simulacra, not the literal form. Ie: No matter how working class you are, you're still charging your fans money to listen to your album. And if you're lucky you get to be a really rich guy singing about working class struggles (and then your authenticity comes from the life you lived beforehand - see: Jay Z's last decade.)

Thread needs Officer Raws photoshops

Lily Allen got a lot of schtick for being of upper middle-class lineage. Also, Mike Skinner who is actually a lot more middle class than he leads people to believe.

Never really understood what it was supposed to be about Mike Skinner that conferred a particular social class on him in people's minds

I think the big example here is MIA: the fury of Reynolds/the Dissensians seemed entirely related to the fact she went to Goldsmiths with her out of Elastica. As if that invalidated every other aspect of her life that informed that first album.

Ah yes, working class salt of the earth Simon and Dissensus moaning about how they didn't discover her first...

Because your childhood can't inform your music any longer if you've since done better for yourself WAT?

Lily Allen mostly got stick for having a famous dad.

The Strokes got chewed out for something similar. But in both cases, I think the complaint was carpet-bagging more than anything else. Like Matisyahu performing with a faux-Jamaican accent. It was just demeaning.

Don't let M.I.A.'s brown skin throw you off.

Reynolds redeemed himself with a really interesting piece about the complexities of the politics of cultural appropriation of Baile Funk, though. DJ Marlboro, a bourgeois Brazilian, coming to the US and collecting Miami Bass records to sample and then sell to the poorest of the poor back in Brazil. Diplo, himself bourgeois, going to Brazil and collecting Funk records (by DJ Marlboro) to sample and then sell to ... people in Hoxton.

Or something like that. Anyway, the point being that it's not one-way traffic, and it's complicated. Who's robbing who?

And now that we're moving from Marxism to Post-Colonialism... I'm all out. Not my area. :(

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and class less and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me

What do we think of this? What relevance is Lennon's own class background?

I happen to really like that song, but my following comments are divorced from that.

He's forwarding a Marxist argument ("Keep you doped with religion...") and speaking it to a group of people who don't see the relevance of class warfare in their lives ("And you think you're so clever and classless and free") - one could say to those whom a Marxist argument is no longer pressing, or attractive. But he's not offering any real solution, and he's still articulating the argument in a context of Capitalism. The solution, "If you want to be a hero well just follow me" is, in my mind, much more offensive than the problems he's posing - it contains the suggestion of a cult of personality (which Lennon clearly cultivated). It also places Lennon in Marx's category of the enlightened bourgeois who leads the poor proletariat into salvation. It's not an argument that rings particularly strong with me, and intellectually I find the song a bit disgusting.

Even while I find it emotionally powerful. And I think this speaks to something we were speaking to above. In the context of music, you're never going to get real "real." It's always going to be playacting, or pretending. So in this case (and this is actually the identical argument Zizek made about voting for Obama), I feel an affinity for something that at least plays the right notes, even if it doesn't mean them. The little lie hopefully makes ripples. First you hear this easy rebellion, and then maybe it leads to something more substantial. Anyway, that's my take on the song. And I think Lennon's own class background is less important here than who he had become. I'm contradicting my own comment on MIA a bit here, but that's because I think Lennon wasn't being influenced by his own background when he wrote this. (Well, that's a shitty, presumptuous thing of me to say - but I don't see his own background in the lyrics of the song. Or hear it in his voice. It's a lovely song, but it doesn't feel personal to me.)

Extending the role-playing idea: choosing to pursue performance and music-making sets one apart from one's origins ('cept 2nd generation artists, I guess). It's an escape from working-class fatalism and middle-class stifling. One of most enjoyable parts of any project I've been in is the gradual realization of the other musician's roots- who came from immigrants, who's dad is a freaked out vet, who's is a Baptist preacher, who's parents are lawyers. It's never been obvious in the early stages. Most of our ambitions were confusing to our families regardless of class. Even if you retain "working class culture" in your music, there's some distance. And if you're co-opting it, there can be valuable objectivity.

My fellow Americans: let's bring Vampire Weekend in to this.

I never thought of 'Working Class Hero' as anything but sincere until just now, when I saw the payoff written down. I'm still not sure that it is ironic, but Lennon did cut through similar pretensions in 'Revolution'

Vampire Weekend are a fascinating case study from a UK point of view because if a British band came along that were that unashamedly privileged, singing about Oxbridge and punting and so on, they would be strung up.

Re: Lennon, according to his Rolling Stone interviews he didn't think Working Class Hero was at all ironic - he claimed it was "revolutionary".

choosing to pursue performance and music-making sets one apart from one's origins

I'm not sure if I buy this. Or rather, I'm conflicted about this argument. On one hand, yes, there is a culture of artists that frequently identifies itself as outside the mainstream. And yes, becoming an artist places you in a particular role in relationship to your listeners - you're now the possessor of music, the seller of music and the performer of music (which gives you that distance). But artists are listeners too, and any particular artist's relationship to a listener is replicated in his relationship to another artist. Also, while there might be true artist colonies in the world, I think saying that TV on the Radio (or whoever the big Williamsburg band is) is totally divorced from the class of Williamsburg is wrongheaded. Or that MIA's music is divorced from her tumultuous upbringing.

Which is to say, I guess, that I don't think there's a class of artists that exist in society. I think that artist A from the Upper East Side, and artist B from Washington Heights, don't occupy the same social space. And I think they're easily tellable about. And maybe artist B has used music to gain some distance from his upbringing, but it's precisely that distance he now cultivates that may distinguish him from artist A. There are differences in distance.

Yeah. I don't think it was intended as ironic. I think "just follow me" was him being enlightened bourgeois. "I'll show you the way to revolution - come with me!" type of thing. Which may be more or less excusable when you remember that Marx basically made the same argument.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Lennon as bourgeois ideologist.

I prefer my Lennon wracked with doubt

Thanks guys. You all just helped me write the next 5 pages of my thesis. (kindaof,sortof)

Who doesn't? This was Lennon on the cusp of his dreaded "newspaper writing" phase - crass, shitty protest songs a-go-go.

Nice Marx quote, Mordy. I'll buy that analysis.

I just remembered that he uses similar phrasing in "Imagine."

"I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one."

It's not as bad, but something very similar at play.

To answer the question, no, it's not justified. Music journalism is not supposed to meddle with any social justice affectations or class biases of any sort. That's pretentious, contradictory (since the music press lives on revenue almost exclusively generated until recently by ads from big corporations) and unethical.

Mordy you have been one of my favorite posters lately fyi.

that said i lol'd huge at

How did dubstep emerge from garage rock? I don't hear the sonic affinities.

― Mordy, Wednesday, November 19, 2008 10:00 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark

lol. Yeah. That was pretty dumbass.

Here's 2 problems tho guys.

1) Lennon didn't intend "just follow me" to be ironic: we're going to call a song lyric's sincerity? However much evidence pro-con you want to drag in, it's a guestimate. And you're talking about a writer with a track record of using irony, so no quote's worth face value.

2) Let's say we can definitively assess the lyric's intent. Does a lyric only say what the author says it says? Obviously not. Bugger.

Ok, let's say that he meant it ironically. So "Working Class Hero" is actually what? A mockery of people who see escapism from the drudgery of working class life in terms of just following a leader? I mean, I don't see a reasonable interpretation of that line that makes sense in the context of the song.

if a British band came along that were that unashamedly privileged, singing about Oxbridge and punting and so on, they would be strung up.

No. A micro-niche of NME "kill ze prog dinosaurs"es and SWSS paperboys wd be all up in arms. Majority of record buying populace wd give something less than a rabbit tod.

xpost

"You wanna be a hero then just follow me" = you want to be an "hero" then just follow my career path. Big woop. Look where it got me.

So he's saying; Yeah, your life really sucks. But guess what? Mine isn't much better.

I don't know...

Me neither. But it's very readable, unless you're determined to call certain lyrics as without nuance/irony/whatever.

Imagine (oops) that each mention of "a wch is something to be" is prefaced with "and"

it's a meaening of "We're all in the dumper, but we're given this picture of becoming rich and famous to make it seem that we can become a symbol/inspiration for our fellow man to aspire to, but actually it's small comfort and the rich will always have it richer"

JL had earned a few bob by this point, but he wasn't as rich as rich people.

I don't have time to really engage with this thread, but some A++ posts, Mordy.

FWIW, in my opinion thinking about class in relation to music, and art, generally, is absolutely valid, although whether that is "classism", I don't know. But the point about "pretense" is key. Pop is a field where people can play with their identity, so any simple reading is difficult.

Anyway, here's another lyric I always found problematic. Have at it:

Mis-shapes, mistakes, misfits.
Raised on a diet of broken biscuits, oh we don't look the same as you
We don't do the things you do, but we live around here too.
Oh really.
Mis-shapes, mistakes, misfits, we'd like to go to town but we can't risk it
Oh 'cause they just want to keep us out.
You could end up with a smash in the mouth just for standing out.
Oh really. Brothers, sisters, can't you see?
The future's owned by you and me.
There won't be fighting in the street.
They think they've got us beat, but revenge is going to be so sweet.
We're making a move, we're making it now, we're coming out of the side-lines.
Just put your hands up - it's a raid yeah:
We want your homes, we want your lives,
we want the things you won't allow us.
We won't use guns, we won't use bombs
We'll use the one thing we've got more of - that's our minds.
Check your lucky numbers, that much money could drag you under, oh.
What's the point of being rich if you can't think what to do with it?
'Cause you're so very thick.
Oh we weren't supposed to be, we learnt too much at school now
we can't help but see.
That the future that you've got mapped out is nothing much to shout about.
We're making a move, we're making it now,
We're coming out of the side-lines.
Just put your hands up - it's a raid.
We want your homes, we want your lives,
we want the things you won't allow us.
We won't use guns, we won't use bombs
We'll use the one thing we've got more of - that's our minds.
Brothers, sisters, can't you see?
The future's owned by you and me.
There won't be fighting in the street.
They think they've got us beat but revenge is going to be so sweet.
We're making a move. We're making it now.
We're coming out of the sidelines.
Just put your hands up - it's a raid.
We want your homes, we want your lives,
we want the things you won't allow us.
We won't use guns, we won't use bombs
We'll use the one thing we've got more of - that'sour minds.
And that's our minds. Yeah.

And your point is?

Class relationships between author of song, narrator of song, audience for song, who song is addressed to: unpack.

Or maybe it's straigtforward; in which case, ignore post.

All of which seems to treat "class" in the sense of "classroom" rather than societal strata as per "we learnt (sic) too much at school."

I dunno, the "misfits" are 'us lot'...

And how the 'dumb bullies' who rule the roost when young, fall away in importance once you're out of the school system.

I dunno, you have to tell us the substance of your misgivings, at least sos we can agree or disagree...

The sequel to "Mis-Shapes" is actually "I'll Show You" by Dexy's, even though the latter was recorded 13 years before the former.

"We're coming out (*bup-bup-bup bup bup-bup-bah*)
Out of our closets (*bup-bup-bup bup bup-bup-bah*)
Out in the streets (*bup-bup-bup bup bup-bup-bah*)"

I understand that'll be on Britannia High this Sunday.

Funnily enough, when Dexy's made "Show me", I thought to myself "I know exactly how they have 'grown up now'" so I was indeed gratified when "I'll show you" came out and confirmed that he was thinking along the same lines.