Blatantly racist songs that have managed to pass under the prejudice-radar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6lxuYme-8c
Always surprised this song didn't get too much flak for it's pretty scathing views of the Chinese. Yet still, it describes the slave-trade as an
aspect of Chinese society, alongside it's "polluted water"...
for any Chinese to attack the song would also imply a defense of the trade. I guess it's not so bad, but you'd never see stuff like this ever
hitting the radio-waves today.

Also, there's no YouTube video if it but on Disc 2 of Pavement's Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinal's Edition you can hear one of the group members
adding a chorus of "Suzuki! Yamazaki! Toyota! Mitsubishi!" in a faux-Japanese accent during the live version of Box Elder. Personally made me
lol but, once again, the live denoted that it was played on Aussie-radio and surely hearing any band today do the same would definitely flag
down the Japanese equivalent of the NAACP (whatever that may be).

RADAR! RADAR! With an A.

ladies and gentlemen, mr. kel_polaris

Moz has like twelve of these.

yeah the british music press really dropped the ball with that story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxUz2VHJuhk

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=video&cd=1&ved=0CDMQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DiRdsI0FLPDY&ei=fu3lTIyPMYqIhQeM6_3nDA&usg=AFQjCNFnVlEaxni9eyYG1fjCje5P7PqYsg

People have pointed out how horrible "Brown Sugar" is like a million times, right? Because I've actually never seen it done, but it seems too blatant not to have attracted tons of ire. In any case it does seem to get a pass(though of course that's different from flying under the radar prejudice).

Er, "flying under the prejudice-radar," that is.

oh this guy is back?

KUNG FU FIGHTING
(Douglas)
Carl Douglas - 1974
Also recorded by: The Drifters; Bus Stop; La Muerte.

Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh

Everybody was kung-fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightning
For they fought with expert timing

They were funky China men from funky Chinatown
They were chopping them up and they were chopping them down
It's an ancient Chineese art and everybody knew their part
From a feint into a slip, and a-kicking from the hip

Everybody was kung-fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightning
For they fought with expert timing

There was funky Billy Chin and little Sammy Chung
He said here comes the big boss, lets get it on
We took a bow and made a stand, started swinging with the hand
The sudden motion made me skip now we're into a brand knew trip

Everybody was kung-fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightning
But they did it with expert timing

Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh

Everybody was kung-fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightning
Make sure you have expert timing

Oh-oh-oh-oh
Kung-fu fighting
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Had to be fast as lightning

Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Keep on....keep on....keep on
Oh-oh-oh-oh....Yeah, yeah
Oh-oh-oh-oh........FADE

They edited out the "chinaman" part from the version of this used in Kung Fu Panda, so it didn't pass under everybody's prejudice -radar.

not really seeing the racism in Kung Fu Fighting.. maybe someone can explain it to me

is it that he calls them "cats", which are subhuman animals?

then again any song that starts off with this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_riff - has some splainin to do i guess

one of my best friends - who is Korean - has that riff as her ringtone and it just slays me whenever her phone rings

GNR's 'one in a million'. axl never copped any flak for that, right? right?

Um, that Carl Dug song is just about describing the "kung fu" films anyway.

Don't understand why this didn't get more flak in the Rock Against Racism era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdsI0FLPDY

I think there was a 'sort-of' statute of limitations regarding a whole bunch of these, where if you 'fessed' up to being wrong, eventually it was put down to "the times were different" and the "scaredy" nature of the fear of 'immigration' was wrong.

Of course, when people like Eric Clap ends up saying exactly what he said before, over nothing stroger than orange juice, then's the time to mark down.

Never heard Black Messiah before so that definitely went under my radar. Not keen to hear it again either.

Tracer, I think that calling a Chinese person a "chinaman" is considered pretty racist.

That is f'ing hilarious about your friend's ringtone though.

the chinese verse in "work it"

I think there was a 'sort-of' statute of limitations regarding a whole bunch of these, where if you 'fessed' up to being wrong, eventually it was put down to "the times were different" and the "scaredy" nature of the fear of 'immigration' was wrong.

Has Ray Davies ever said anything about Black Messiah? Because I want to cut him some slack if I can.

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060527054859/uncyclopedia/images/1/17/Siamese.jpg

Well, I was trying to find something re: Ray Davies, just got a lot of "Whoo, Ray was ahead of his time, Obama Obama" and so on. Internet sucks.

What the hell is Black Messiah really supposed to prove? I've never been able to work it out.

Paranoia I would have thought..

Rolling Stones-Some Girls. Though that might have caught some flak. In his new book, Richards stands by it, says that in his opinion, black chicks did really want to ....

I think there was a 'sort-of' statute of limitations regarding a whole bunch of these, where if you 'fessed' up to being wrong, eventually it was put down to "the times were different" and the "scaredy" nature of the fear of 'immigration' was wrong.

Still wonder what would have happened had the Beatles gone ahead with "No Pakistanis" instead of dialing it down to "Get Back." Probably not a rep-killer but maybe a tarnisher on the order of "Brown Sugar"...?

Above song makes me feel even smugger in my long-held belief that the Kinks mostly blow.

Hate and war - I hate all the English
Hate and war - they're just as bad as wops
Hate and war - I hate all the politeness
Hate and war - I hate all the cops

I wanna walk down any street
Looking like a creep
I don't care if I get beat up
By any Kebab Greek

sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much stuff like this that its kinda endless.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/8c/31/6f82a2c008a0bf9e6ef24010.L.jpg

and they aren't even the worst offenders. that album actually does have some plight of the red man stuff on it. but if you made a comp of american pop songs about injuns it would be a 20 disc set.

had the Beatles gone ahead with "No Pakistanis"

This was always an improv song, where PMac related what Enoch said, not agreeing with him.

I always thought it more significant that later on, he's singing about the "Common wealth being MUCH too wealthy for me" at which point the man of the people Lennon suggests "much too COMMON" instead.

Oh, and I didn't realise that Kinks song was from 1978. Way after the stat.

(x-post) Good friend of mine went on a tirade once about "Please, Mr. Custer," and how it's always included on those "20 Goofy Greats"-type compilations, when the subject is anything but goofy.

(xx-post) My 2-year old is addicted to "The Aristocats" and yeah, those Siamese Cat characterizations are definitely from another era.

Rock & Roll N*gger

Okay, so now I know why Ray Davies got shot in New Orleans.

you could get away with cliche and pretty bonkers race/ethnicity novelty songs until at least the 70's. in america anyway. nobody even blinked.

um, quaint?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOdsOhqDfZ8

just disney alone...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ5ld-MlKcM

My step-mom had the HAIR soundtrack and about whipped the shit out of me and my step-brother when she heard us running around the house singing this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovkk7XpOfyo

I guess context is everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63CiRbiaoFo

People seem to (by and large) give Joy Division a pass on their horrible-if-you-think-about-it name.

Maybe not the lyrical context so much as the "Ugh-a-wuga" backing vocals, "Running Bear and Little White Dove."

Ha, I always think of wigs when I hear "Wig Wam Bam". Maybe because the song doesn't have that fake American Indian percussion and singing that some bubblegum songs have.

Rolling Stones-Some Girls. Though that might have caught some flak. In his new book, Richards stands by it, says that in his opinion, black chicks did really want to ....

― Randy Moss' dog's personal chef (Bill Magill), F

oh yeah that definitely caught some flak from feminists and civil rights group iirc. i think Jesse Jackson commented on it. and Garrett Morris did a bit on 'Weekend Update' after the the commotion.

Yeah, Jesse Jackson's really one to talk, dude's a total womanizer. Just like with anti-gay preachers, the moral issue a politician inveighs agains the most is what he's engaged in in his secret life.

1. I would hardly call Pavement being goofy "blatantly racist"
2. Next time you copy a post from your blog/another msg borad you should prolly delete the line breax or something?

you shouldn't worry your pretty little head about it, sweetheart

lol

i think it's more how it was presented as such i.e. "intelligent dance music" = serious (white, male). but then there was a lot of 'dumb' white rave music too, eurotrashy or something. am i reading polarization into this that wasn't there. also i was like 15 at the time. could be just a weird retro thing of hearing all this 90s house and techno made by black artists for the first time in 2013.

i do think idm vs. black electronic music in electronic/rock music publications in the 90s would be an interesting topic to look at.

relationship to jungle later in the decade def a bit dodgy

I dunno. I was raving in Baltimore in a fairly integrated scene at the time. We definitely knew a lot of techno and house too. I never liked IDM as a genre name. I preferred "downtempo", but that had its drawbacks too. Definitely part of the experience of electronic music for me was having no idea what these people looked like (except RDJ, who looked awful).

yeah i imagine it was different if you were raving at the time.

Nobody danced to IDM, that's what you listen to while you BBS or something.

Exitilus-core

i think it's more how it was presented as such i.e. "intelligent dance music" = serious (white, male). but then there was a lot of 'dumb' white rave music too, eurotrashy or something. am i reading polarization into this that wasn't there. also i was like 15 at the time. could be just a weird retro thing of hearing all this 90s house and techno made by black artists for the first time in 2013.

i think there's a bit of truth to this, but it probably holds more for the audience than the artists - i've always gotten the impression that the descriptor "intelligent dance music" was widely reviled by all but the most insufferable music fans (nb i was younger than 15 at the time so this is mostly speculation)

I don't think so, IIRC many electronic electronic music writers at least readily accepted the term. And beyond the IDM scene too, the idea that rave/hardcore/eurohouse/etc had dumbed down the "true" techno and house ethos was not uncommon: there was Derrick May's famous rebuttal of the British rave scene, and a couple of years later people like Paul Oakenfold were saying similar things about hardcore. I still remember and article from 1994 or 1995 that described µ-ziq as "like jungle but not stupid".

I'd say it wasn't until the late 90s, when IDM had reached it worst drill n' bass excesses, that even people who liked the music started to question this whole "intelligent" business.

happy hardcore?

an ex-ilxor had a nice facebook response to someone about how idm was a moniker advanced in the US to exclude the contributions of black people in Detroit and Chicago

so uh, this passed without comment two years ago
I'm not a big fan of oriental food in general, though I do like some other kinds of asian cuisine. I have no grievance with Asian people at all, Chinese or anyone else.

Even in the context of that track, still doesn't seem racist.

― Johnny Fever, Friday, November 19, 2010 4:43 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"oriental food"

CALL THE FUCKING POLICE GUYS SOMEONE USED THE PHRASE "ORIENTAL FOOD"

mh can you link to the original thread that post was in?

i was thinking earlier tonight about how 1) power is represented in this discourse and 2) how power might be remembered in this discourse.

from what i remember IDM was an American-originated term that crept into use over here a good few years after Warp, Aphex, mu-Ziq, Autechre etc etc had been happening. didn't really have a word for what kind of music it was as late into it as something like the Richard D. James album. and it grew up alongside techno, rave, trance over here. in the early 90s you could hear "Didgeridoo" and "Can You Party?" and "Energy Flash" and etc as part of the same music without quetioning it. IDM seems to be a later label and yes it totally participates in the "white = thoughtful = art vs black = dumb = commercial" discourse EVEN THO IT DOESN'T EXCLUSIVELY MEAN THAT BEFORE YOU PITCH IN WITH CAP'N SAVE A IDM ARGUMENTS but of course right from the beginnings of Detroit there's also been this strain within Techno of "this is future music, strictly not for the lamestream" so this complicated intersection of class and race and notions of mersh vs underground and dudes with fucken awful taste who make me ashamed to like some of the things i like just cos of their awful reasoning come into it

an ex-ilxor had a nice facebook response to someone about how idm was a moniker advanced in the US to exclude the contributions of black people in Detroit and Chicago

This may be true, but its's worth considering (as I mentioned in my previous post) that Derrick May was probably the first major figure in the scene to accuse European rave of being vulgar, and to this date there exists a strain of Detroit techno purism that says Europeans dumbed down the original techno vision of (black) Detroit musicians, who are seen to be the true torch bearers of techno.

Also, I can't speak for the American scene, but it seemed to me that in Europe IDM musicians were often quite reverent of and influenced by Detroit techno; if they were opposed to something, it was the "dumb" European rave music, not American techno. So while IDM undoubtedly was an elitist and predominantly white scene, I don't think it was founded on any inherent race division, rather than a class division: IDM musician could still revere the more middle-class, cerebral vision of Detroit techno and its descendants, while the more working-class and sexual/bodily vision of Chicago house and its descendants was looked down upon.

from what i remember IDM was an American-originated term that crept into use over here a good few years after Warp, Aphex, mu-Ziq, Autechre etc etc had been happening. didn't really have a word for what kind of music it was as late into it as something like the Richard D. James album.

I don't remember the term "IDM" becoming common in Europe until the latter half of the 90s, true, but the term "intelligent" was already used before that, when discussing certain types of electronic music. You had Warp's "Artifical Intelligence" comp series, people were talking about "intelligent jungle", and so on... So while there may have been no umbrella term for it yet, the idea that certain forms of electronic music were more intelligent than other was certainly common in Europe too.

that's true re: IDM in Europe, and the rest is true up to a point except that the lines are very blurry when they start out, Detroit vs Chicago wasn't even a clear Apollo vs Dionysus dichotomy in the US, and their influence gets more and more intertangled when it reaches Europe

to reduce it to "their will always be funkless nerds who hate joy in any genre of music" wd be totally unfair and true

The "intelligent" label was always insulting, I don't think there was ever a time you could say it with a straight face and not sound like a moron (US/CAN perspective). "Intelligent" was a catch-all for techno intended for home listening, as if there was something inherently smart about staying home and not going out to dance, which is why it was such a ridiculous term in the first place.

It was used with a straight face in Europe: you had records with titles like Intelligent Jungle, Intelligent Drum & Bass, The Intelligent Minds of Junge etc...

"junge" = "jungle"

was just skimming through the whole thread yesterday, interesting how the discourse has shifted from the beginning

I mean, if I was in a bar with Ted Leo or Miley Cyrus and they started saying crazy racist shit, even just to get a rise, I'd probably go public with it too.

― http://tinyurl.com/koalalala (Pleasant Plains), Saturday, November 20, 2010 5:03 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what'd ted leo do now?

This song is about white supremacy, and a pretty disgusting endorsement of it. The song longs for the days of old when blacks were subservient to the white man. The 'black gold' is the black man's labor being exploited for the benefit of the capital gains of whites. The first verse gives an image of a seemingly meaningless fight between two kids on a playground. However, the first chorus summarizes what is happening in this fight--it's between and white and black boy/man, on both a literal and figurative level. The speaker in the chorus that is handicapped and wants to go for a ride is speaking of lynching. Although he is handicapped (perhaps caused by a black man), his hateful pride still burns and propels him to participate in these acts of intimidation to suppress blacks.

The second verse refers to the golden age that the speaker remembers, when blacks were segregated. The second chorus then refers to the black man as a 'soldier,' however, this is a 'white fight,' and therefore, he has no place in it. The 'going for a ride' line here can be thought of as when lynch mobs would tie blacks to their vehicles and drag them through the street. The 'feel some pride...' part speaks of the sadness propelling the speaker to commit these hateful acts--the sadness is at seeing blacks being treated equally.

The 'mother do you know where your kids are tonite?' line is a mocking reference to the possible kidnapping and maiming of several black children by the speaker.

The final verse calls for this hatred to be adopted by the white children of today--it will give them 'something to do' and feed their hateful hunger. The final two lines is the speaker reflecting on when 'this spot' used to be a much more racially pure place, free of the tainting presence of blacks.

A very horrific song indeed. The fact that it got so much radio play in the 90's is quite offensive to much of the unsuspecting public. People always speak of hidden meanings in songs--voices that are played backwards insinuating evil acts. Well, the hate is usually as plain as day. Dave Pirner should be tried for hate crimes for some of the horrific acts he endorses.

Flag bombast07 on December 04, 2010

seriously tho what the fuck happens at 2:40 of the Chili Peps' "Around the World"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9eNQZbjpJk

Rap Genius to the rescue

http://rock.rapgenius.com/403676/Red-hot-chili-peppers-around-the-world/Inaudible-sounds-like-an-asian-dialect

Was IDM ever played at clubs? I stayed away from electronic music in the 90s (was a Beatles/Kinks/Who snob) but a friend was really into raves and happy hardcore and PLUR and all that and IDM was something he just wasn't into. I always felt like the label was a bit of a slag AGAINST the music itself, like here is some weird noise that some people consider music, but it's with electronic instruments so I guess it's dance music, only you can't dance to any of it, but that's ok, you can sit at home and listen to it during your Unreal Tournament LAN battle.

From what I remember late 90s raver culture seemed really into Detroit, and heavily promoted it as the source of electronic dance music. Again I personally didn't go to any clubs but I saw lots of flyers and magazine articles and stuff and they never mentioned Kraftwerk or Moroder or anything else, it was almost always tracing musical lineage to Detroit.

I don't think there was ever a time you could say it with a straight face and not sound like a moron (US/CAN perspective). "Intelligent" was a catch-all for techno intended for home listening, as if there was something inherently smart about staying home and not going out to dance, which is why it was such a ridiculous term in the first place.

I don't mind using "IDM" on these boards because as dumb an nonsensical as it is, it describes a genre that definitely exists and has no other good name. You say "IDM" and people know what you're talking about. Same with "progressive rock", neither are terms I'd use with people who didn't know what the term meant. Or at least I'd air quote them pretty hard.

i'm not sure why IDM rankles with me whereas Prog doesn't, even tho both labels carry these ridiculous assumptions within their names. maybe because when i discovered Prog that label had been in place for years, whereas IDM happened when i still felt invested in the music and was trapped on the sidelines going NOOOOOOOOOOO

don't air quote. ever.

dan can you expand a little bit?

The video starts out directly referencing/imitating south central LA imagery in a confrontational, exaggerated manner, setting a scene that's both uncomfortable and recognizable, like someone took a surface look at Boyz in the Hood and Friday and threw their impressions into a blender. Things start getting weird when dude starts playing his tape and weird, hip-hop influenced music that is rather decidedly not the type of hip-hop you associate with this type of scene blares out of the car stereo. Up through the confrontation with the women on the sidewalk, you have a pretty good idea of where things are going right up until the megalimo appears. Then, things get EXTREMELY weird and the entire video literally distorts itself around Aphex Twin; all of the sexy imagery is immediately undercut by the fright masks, either by including them in the romp shots or immediately cutting to them after showing some sexy bodies dancing. The guys themselves get sucked into this whole thing as well, not noticing the nightmare masks until confronted by the non-Aphex mask, which breaks the mood for them and turns their list into terror. Once the track gets going, the whole video turns into an extended exercise in subverting the straight male gaze from desire into horror, using all of the tricks intended to stimulate the straight male gaze. The racial stuff at the beginning acts as camouflage, making you think you have the video's number up until it makes that hard left turn and goes cuckoo; I also like that it can execute this turn to revulsion without resorting to violence or extreme grossness.

Also I used the term IDM very liberally because Wheb I first encountered it in 1987 it stood for "industrial dance music" and I just assumed ppl were categorizing the Warp stuff along that axis

I feel like IDM was originally used to describe early 90s derrick may worship but then by the late 90s it was describing this 'subversive' white european art music (glitch etc) that worked well with critical theory.

here's some lines from the "Windowlicker" wiki page just in case you were wondering if IDM fans were racist or not

It is a ten-minute long parody of contemporary American gangsta hip-hop music videos. In the video, two foul-mouthed young men (a Latino and an African American) in Los Angeles are window shopping for women (referred to in the end credits as "hoochies"); the French term for window shopping is faire du lèche-vitrine, which literally translates to "licking the windows". Suddenly, a ridiculously long white limousine (38 windows in length, including driver's window, which takes 20 seconds to fully display) crashes into the two men's black Mazda Miata NA (MX5) convertible, and a "pimped-out" Richard D. James, displaying a surreal amount of wealth and power, emerges with his signature fixed grin.

who says you can't make dumb, sweeping generalizations based off an Aphex Twin Wikipedia article

http://www.hookafrog.com/includes/templates/glasgow_neat/images/logo.png

tbf whiney works in a pretty diverse workplace w/ progressive hiring practices: http://www.spin.com/about/

0/20 black people

thanks for that clarification, frogbs

I don't think Windowlicker deserves a Wikipedia page. Can I delete it?

yes

I don't think OutdoorFish deserves a login. Can somebody delete it?

the night visiting song

hey white boy, what you doing up town?

Speaking as someone who never went raving in the 90s and read about more dance music than they were able to get their hands on, it was obvious, even from publications like the NME, that Detroit techno was revered as pretty much year zero. And a lot of early IDM artists, Black Dog especially, wore their Detroit influences on their sleeves pretty proudly.

IDM's relationship with later (predominantly) black British dance music, especially UKG, is a lot trickier. But I believe friends of mine who were there when they say that drill and bass nights could regularly go off and it wasn't unheard of to have Aphex and Grooverider playing in adjacent rooms.

Later than that there was a rhetorical tendency by a certain type of fan to use the phrase IDM to separate the music they liked not just from black British dance music but from ALL of contemporary dance music (including/especially a lot of Euro stuff). I remember people claiming, with all seriousness, that dance music came from "Africans dancing around to drumming" whereas IDM was in the European classical tradition, which was not only full of immensely dodgy racial assumptions but also full of logical holes that only served to highlight quite how little they knew about European classical music. Or white Western classical music, which is what they really meant. Anyway that tendency was pretty widespread by the time Drukqs came out.

I definitely remember the phrase "intelligent drum and bass" existing before IDM as a term was belatedly grafted onto Warp etc. And IDM as a concept was pretty much redundant by 2002 or thereabouts anyway and the future turned out to lie in things like Basic Channel that had been under everyone's noses all along. It still amazes me that there's only like four years between The Richard D James Album and Vocalcity and yet it feels like a chasm.

Not exactly fitting the thread title, but the NY Yankees just discovered that Kate Smith recorded some dubious songs 80 years ago.

https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/ny-kate-smith-god-bless-america-20190418-wfkyednrvrherh57sfmb4h7s5y-story.html