The timing of The Boss wheeling out an 80-piece, robed African American choir during the performance of his new single, “Working on a Dream,” as part of his enthusiastic and otherwise inspiring Super Bowl Halftime Show performance was regrettable. For some time I’ve been thinking about using the month of February, Black History Month in the real world, to open a discussion on issues of race in rock ‘n roll. It was never my intention to pull The Boss into this discussion. As I think about the music world’s frequently missed opportunities that have resulted from both real-world barriers to musical integration and artificially divisive marketing genres, like Rock and Soul and Rhythm and Blues and so forth, not once did I consider Bruce Springsteen to have contributed to this problem. If fact, I’d say that as much as any white rocker over the last 35 years, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have sincerely done as much as anyone at keeping the footbridges across our racial divides intact. So don’t take what I’m about to say too personally, Bruce.
As we bemoan what I’m dubbing Exploitive Black Rock History Month, though, the device of an established rock artist dialing up an African American robed choir will come under scrutiny as will Amy Winehouse‘s “retro-Negro” trio of slap-happy backing dancers and rock bands’ employment of a low-wage, Last Surviving Bluesman to bolster credibility and dazzle white middle-class audiences. Some of what I’ll have to say — and what you may choose to share — will be painful. Some of our assumptions and opinions, especially since membership in the Halls of Rock has been pretty white and male, as far as I can tell, may be downright wrong. I’m hoping we can pull in some Townsfolk who may have a different personal perspective on these issues. I’m accepting of the fact that I may not always know what I’m talking about, as I hope you will accept your own limitations, but I’m no longer sitting quietly and bitching to only my close friends and family about the use of humans as window dressing for a rock artist. The same goes for a black artist’s token use of well-known white rock guitarist (eg, Michael Jackson) or Gwen Stefani‘s abhorrent use of those Japanese kwepie dolls.
Popular music of the last 50 years is loaded with enriching blends of cultural and ethnic musical traditions: Stax/Volt, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Talking Heads, even the lightweight Fine Young Cannibals… Plenty of white rock artists have incorporated large chunks of black musical traditions in their sound without direct collaboration with a black musician, and that can be cool too. I’m not suggesting some purist equation regarding this stuff nor do I intend to be overly judgemental. Rather, I’d like us to focus on what may be some of the most egregious practices of exploitive cultural devices in rock and see if we can’t do our part to put an end to them.
Later this week I’ll roll out my first examination of what may or may not be an exploitive practice employed by rock musicians over the years. I’ll be asking for your help in sorting this out. A few other pieces are expected to follow. I look forward to a healthy, if sometimes awkward, series of discussions.
Great topic! I’m down.
Good to hear, snuh! I’ll probably hold off until Wednesday before I put forth my opening piece (because we’ve got a very special event planned for tomorrow), but I encourage all of you to feel free to start formulating your thoughts.
If anyone’s got a perspective on this broad topic that they’d like to draft for discussion on The Main Stage, it’s your Rock Town Hall! If you don’t have Back Office privileges, which allow you to draft new threads, and would like them, let me know and I can hook you up. Thanks.
Let me belly-flop into these sensitive waters, hoping my good intentions might compensate for anyone I may offend.
After decades of exploring all the micro-genres rock and country & western I”ve leaned in later years more towards funk, soul, Latin and jazz music, the things we think of as being “black music”. It’s a rhythm thing mainly, I’ve just gravitated towards more rhythmic-based and less song-oriented ideas.
It has changed the way I feel even about artists I’ve been fans of in the past, in particular Springsteen, whose jazzier drummer from the first two records (Vini Lopez) connected his music with artists like Ray Charles, Van Morrison and even Brubeck.
The switch to “muscular” Max Weinberg changed everything rhythmically for the band. Gone too were members and contributors from the first two records who gave those records a “blacker” feel: i.e. Richard Davis, David Sancious. Richard Blackwell and Harold Wheeler.
By BORN IN THE USA Clarence was the last of that soulful thread, his King Curtis knock-off solos that seemed hip in the 70’s seemed too corny for the New Wave eighties. From then on, the Boss Man treated him like his bitch on stage, taking his phallic sax in exchange for a tambourine. The recent gospel choir seemed like more window dressing (is that song gospel-tinged otherwise?), roughly analogous to Michael Steele being the new head of the RNC.
I’m not speaking from any high horse here, this is just another white guy’s opinion. I admit the guy does have a lot of enthusiasm, he just isn’t working any of my musical sweet spots anymore.
Did anybody else look at his dyed eyebrows and see the resemblance to Neil Diamond? I’d like to see his half-time set…
Nice opening thoughts, db. Thanks for laying your stones on the table. You make some great points, and although I haven’t gone in the exact rhythmic directions you’ve followed, I’m right with you on rock’s continued drifting from its “black” rhythmic roots.
I look greatly forward to what I hope is a month-long discussion! I can’t see how it could fail to be interesting.
Yeah, it’s a tragedy that Springsteen decided not to become the King of Afro-Cuban jazz and we subsequently had to put up with second rate stuff like “Thunder Road” “Sherry Darling” “No Surrender” and “The Rising”. Just a tragedy.
Sorry to shoot the first cannon here but gimme a break, dbuskirk.
Babe Ruth was a pretty good pitcher, but he dropped that gig about the time he discovered he was the greatest hitter of all time.
Yeah, it sure would have been a shame to miss “Sherry Darlin'”.
Without a doubt everything I advised him to do would have kept him from being a rock megastar, if I wrote the rock bio BORN TO RUN it would be all about the tragedy of Mike Appel’s firing and how his music never rcovered. For example I never would have guessed that what American music lovers were really craving was more of that guy who jumps on the mini-tramp.
But the idea that the guy who made those old Main Line bootlegs turned into the circus act that played that halftime carnival is just grotesque to me. Who knew one could justify the entire career of “Up With People” in twelve minutes flat. I dropped my guacamole and chicken fingers.